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All the way to the top

By Frank Pellegrini

(TIME.com) -- Forget all about a Monday morning concession.

The U.S. Supreme Court surprised everybody Friday by sending word that it has decided to hear George W. Bush's request to erase everything that's happened since November 17. The Court says it will pronounce December 1.

In an appeal of court decisions that went against them in the Florida high court and the Atlanta federal court, Bush's legal team are making a two-track argument. First, they are claiming that selective hand recounts are unconstitutional on fairness grounds. Second -- and this is the shiny new legal bauble -- that the Florida Supreme Court overstepped its judicial bounds by doing the Florida legislature's job.

Hard to tell which argument appealed to the Justices more. Now, while the Florida ground war over dimples, absentee ballots and Sunday's certification grinds on unaffected, both sides now know that the mother of all decisions could still be a week away.

In other words, George W. can go on clearing brush at his ranch while Al Gore plays more touch football.

Al Gore's lawyers spent Thanksgiving trying to move the finish line. George W. Bush's spent Friday trying to raise the bar.

The next big court ruling of Non-Election 2000 should come down Friday in the wake of a 2 p.m. hearing in Leon County court. The Bush team is asking Judge Ralph Smith for "immediate action" on ordering 14 heavily Republican, heavily military counties to count military absentee votes according to a lenient federal standard.

Sensing a p.r. sinkhole -- they know that Bob Dole is not just freshening up his tan in Florida -- the Gore camp wasn't fighting it too hard. But if Republicans are successful in getting Sunday's tallies amended, there may be at least 700 more votes in it for Bush. Which explains why Gore won't be surrendering Miami-Dade just yet.

And why Joe Lieberman came out in front of the vice-presidential residence Friday to soften the p.r. ground for the battle, holding a press conference to accuse Republican supporters, via "orchestrated demonstrations" in Miami-Dade on Wednesday, of intimidating the canvassing board into dropping its hand count. Expect Gore's post-certification trump card to be well cared for all weekend.

In the counting houses, the three-headed, magnifying-glass-wielding canvassing boards in Broward and Palm Beach both swear they'll be done picking over their "questionable" piles by the Sunday 5 p.m. deadline. Broward, with a quarter of its 2,000 undervotes counted, has turned up 271 net votes for Gore; Palm Beach, just beginning its own 10,000-vote stack, has turned up 14. No Lotto yet for Gore.

Certainly the Supreme Court's interest gives Bush a dose of legal credibility with the public. And of course it gives him a chance to simply win, once and for all and without any real recourse for Gore, and that's always worth a shot. But even so, the Supremes just gave Al Gore another week.

If Gore had lost on the numbers on Sunday, his Miami-Dade fight would have been a political migraine for Democrats, coming just a week after telling America that "the Florida Supreme Court has wisely set a deadline for the conclusion of this counting." On Monday, a losing Al Gore would be tossing that deadline away.

And with Bob Torricelli already clearing his throat Friday, raising his own banner for 2004 -- "what was a legal problem now seems to have become a mathematical problem" -- it was likely to get ugly if Gore stuck around.

Now the focus is on Friday, the first day of December, when the real Supremes can either turn back the clock and name George W. Bush president (still a legal long shot) or end the Republican's legal road once and for all. At which point Republican legislators in Florida -- or their Dick Armey-led counterparts in Washington -- would have their chance to grab the wheel.

In the meantime, Bush can hope for it all to be a bad dream. And Gore can worry a little less about Monday morning.

Copyright © 2000 Time Inc.