The United States Supreme Court has ruled on the Florida election debate, sending the matter back to the Florida Supreme Court for further study.

In other words, it didn’t settle the question. Although most voters would say they don’t want nominated justices deciding who will be president (and who may therefore get to nominate more Supreme Court justices), Americans are growing very tired of this unending parody of democracy. In the accustomed order of things, Election Day is the culmination of a long season of campaigning. Then comes Thanksgiving, and after that, Christmas. December is supposed to be a holiday season of peace and goodwill, not continued partisan bickering.

What we want most now is a star in the east, a promise that this process will end soon. We know that a new president will be inaugurated in January, and we’re fairly certain that president will be George W. Bush, but we no longer have faith that by then we’ll know that he was elected fairly.

The twin dangers of this long and complicated election coda are that Americans will lose both interest and faith. By now many of us don’t care whether Bush or Gore takes office. They’ve both demonstrated qualities that may be more representative of our national behavior than we wish to admit. During the campaign — now a month past — they talked about the issues. Since then, all we’ve heard about is Florida. Bush’s "transition team" is taking shape, but it hasn’t been the focus of his attention.

Shouting "Enough, already!" seems less than patriotic, but it’s the logical result of the second loss. Without faith that the eventual result of all these maneuvers will be the truth, it’s hard to argue that political participation is essential or even useful. A plurality of the voters in these United States picked Gore; they’ll get Bush. What’s the point?

There still IS a point, of course. Someone has to make decisions about who will lead the country, and Americans believe deeply that they, collectively, are the right people to do it. No one in the world has come up with a better system than government of the people, by the people and for the people.

Al Gore has engaged in a fight for true representation from which he cannot now disengage himself. It won’t win him this election, and if he keeps it up, it may very well cost him the next one too. In the long run, he may be remembered for sacrificing his political future to modernize the electoral system. If he wanted to be president in 2004, he would have been well advised to stand back and concede, saying, "You take this one, George."