CHICAGO — More than 200 years after its birth, America remains a work in progress, an imperfect, evolving idea. Its partisan founders fought bitterly and its Constitution has been debated since before the ink was even dry, but its saving grace may be the collective willingness of its people to bind their wounds, change course and move on.
So many times the nation's demise was predicted. So often its institutions appeared imperiled. In truth, America has never survived a crisis unchanged.
But what has emerged each time — and likely will again from Election 2000 — has been a more inclusive society, a country more sure of itself, if still flawed.
The nation finally has elected a new president, its 43rd, in one of the messiest, most stressful elections in its history. Most of those who voted did not vote for George W. Bush and many will always question his right to the office. But in time, if history is any measure, the majority is likely to give him time to soar — or fall — on his own.
Bush has much to do. The presidency, already slipping in regard, could suffer anew. The U.S. Supreme Court, long held in the highest regard by Americans who barely understand it, may have been diminished in the eyes of many. Uncomfortable racial questions have re-emerged over the ballot box.
The vote itself, the most basic building block of democracy, has been exposed as less than inviolable.
Yet in interviews Wednesday, scores of politicians, historians, activists and ordinary citizens all around the country, while expressing rage, confusion or frustration, also articulated a sense of pride and hope.
"In order for this country to move forward, there unequivocally must be healing," said Steen Miles, 54, a media consultant and longtime community activist in Atlanta. "One's choice may not have prevailed, but each of us has to pray and trust that the American system prevailed. The personal agendas have to be set aside on the part of the leadership, particularly, and our leaders must now embrace and include all Americans."
Ninoska Perez Castellon, director of the Cuban American National Foundation in Miami, a group that represents mainly conservative exiles from Fidel Castro's Cuba, added, "This country has perhaps given everybody the biggest lesson on democracy.
"It stayed together during this arduous process. It has set an example for the rest of the world to see how to respect democracy and respect the rule of law. In the end, this is what holds this country together. It has stayed together through all of this, and I have no doubt that it will continue to stay together. It is up to everybody to make sure that happens," Castellon said.
Richard Brandolino, 65, of New Lenox, Ill., the Republican majority leader on the Will County Board, believes that in his lifetime he has seen much worse.
"When President Kennedy was killed, I couldn't envision how the country would go forward. When Nixon got caught in Watergate, I couldn't imagine how the country would go on," he said. "But it's about people, and people are amazing in how they manage to go on."
President-elect Bush and his vanquished foe, Al Gore, now stand at a crossroad, and an exhausted America stands with them. As they turn, so turns the country.
In the tumultuous presidential election of 1876, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden forced the nation to endure the unseemly spectacle of dueling slates of electors and the farce of a special commission that in the end cut a baldly political deal. In exchange for the votes of the South, Republicans agreed to withdraw remaining federal troops from the region.
The result was the end of Reconstruction and the damning of the nation's new black citizens to a life in Jim Crow segregation.
"That compromise brought about a national reconciliation, and the crisis passed for some but not others," said Steve Hahn, a history professor at Northwestern University.
A more inspiring brand of reconciliation was established in 1800 when Thomas Jefferson defeated sitting President John Adams in an election that went to the House of Representatives and took 36 rounds of balloting to resolve. The men had fought bitterly throughout the campaign over differing views of where a still-young America should head. They were so bitter that Adams did not even stay around Washington long enough to see Jefferson inaugurated.
Then they reconciled personally, setting an example for a nation.
A dozen years after the election, Adams wrote to the man who beat him. "You and I ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each other," he said. Both men died July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
"Their reconciliation demonstrated to a significant number of people, on both sides of the division, that the nation's commitment to the idea of a United States was strong enough to tolerate occasional messiness," said Henry Binford, professor of history at Northwestern University.
If it took two of the founding fathers 12 years to finally set aside anger for reflection, perhaps it should not be surprising that in the aftermath of a bitter election — settled by a narrow Supreme Court decision — a chorus of angry voices rings in America.
"What a farce," Paul Penderson said while shopping for Christmas presidents at a Los Angeles mall. "How can we look at Bush as president when he not only failed to get the popular vote but also probably lost the electoral vote?"
Robert Allen, a former state senator in Colorado, was equally in touch with his feelings the morning after the Supreme Court rules. "I'll be angry the rest of my life," he said. "This whole idea of it's over and we should reconcile, that's ridiculous," Allen said.
But whether their candidate had won or lost, many Americans were eager just to put the debacle behind them.