A Time of Upheaval and Dramatic Events

The Year of the Snake

News Analysis: Tradition and Legitimacy Unlike most of his precursors � but like John Quincy Adams, Benjamin Harrison and a handful of other presidents past � Mr. Bush entered the White House without an unchallenged, universally accepted title to office. A half-million more Americans voted for Al Gore than for Mr. Bush, which counted for nothing in the legal sense but for something, at least, in the political sense. Mr. Bush became the first president since Harrison in 1888 to lose the popular vote but win in the Electoral College. Only the intervention of the United States Supreme Court, itself as deeply divided as possible, 5 votes to 4, tipped the Electoral College vote in Mr. Bush's favor. Arguments about the legitimacy of the Texas governor's victory have persisted even as the country accepted the fact that he had won. Thousands of the doubtful and disenchanted took to the streets of Washington today in angry protest. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/21/politics/21ASSE.html?pagewanted=all