Let's face it: This was a fine campaign, and it is having a terrific ending. Stalemate at 4 in the morning!

Early on ("major league, big time") I called Gov. Bush an amateur, but he proved me wrong. Within the limits of his range, he ran a professional show, right through to the finish.

But then, so did Al Gore. Gore picked strong issues, hit them hard, stayed on message, fought every day. He never looked inept (Mondale '84), foolish (Dukakis '88), nor did he face the smallest personal scandal (Clinton '92). The Democrat ran as a Democrat, especially on Social Security and Medicare, and he showed it can be done.

So what happened? Given the economy, many said, Gore should have won in a walk. That's nonsense, as I wrote here in February . And in August , the economic argument was endangered -- by high interest rates, the Nasdaq bubble and oil prices.

And Gore wasn't done in by his character, either. As I wrote here on Nov. 1 , this campaign was governed from the beginning by the ebb and flow of splinter parties. And of these, the one that mattered most was not Nader and the Greens. It was the man almost no one ever mentioned: Pat Buchanan and the disappearance of Ross Perot's Reform Party.

Let's review my little spreadsheet model. Adjusting the baseline slightly, let's make it 75% of Perot voters to Bush, and 4% off the top from Gore to Nader. Result: Every state falls exactly as it did, except four: New Hampshire, West Virginia, Arkansas and Louisiana. The latter two are clearly a neighborhood effect. The model calls Oregon for Bush by 0.1 percentage points (looking good), and also Florida (we'll see). Gore wins the popular vote by about 350,000 -- against an actual margin of about 190,000 in 100 million votes. How good is this? Better than the 3 p.m. exit polls, which had Bush winning Iowa, New Mexico, Wisconsin and leading in Pennsylvania.

In Florida, Nader mattered. Without him, Al Gore would be president-elect of the U.S. as of now. I regret that -- and I bet Nader's voters will come to regret it, too. But the death of Reform mattered more. If Reform had survived, this election wouldn't have been close. Pat Buchanan congratulated Nader for getting the credit for beating Gore. Was he laughing when he said that?

So now what?

On the election: Sit tight, the system is working. Let's not hear any more guff about the Electoral College, which, if the split had gone the other way, was set to come under heavy fire from a lot of people who are now being very quiet. I'm for Gore. But the fact is, if we didn't have the Electoral College there'd be chaos today, with a mad search for lost ballot boxes in every precinct in the country. As things are, only the mess in Florida matters.

How can that mess be resolved? Perhaps by the recount or the absentee ballots. If not, then by a new election in Palm Beach County or even statewide. So what if that happens? The U.S. government is in place, and we have until January to sort it all out. This country is almost incredibly well designed.

When Florida comes in for Bush -- what most people expect -- then what? On Dec. 18, the Electoral College makes him president-elect. True, it would only take three electors who felt strongly that the popular will should trump the electoral tally -- and the election would go, legally and legitimately, to Gore. Would that be so terrible? Nope. It would be part of the genius of the Electoral College that it permits the anomaly of a split vote to be corrected. But I don't expect that.

(And suppose Florida gets tied up as the constitutional date of Jan. 20, 2001, comes near? Well then, here is the best scenario -- OK, I'm not a constitutional lawyer and can't vouch for every detail -- one can possibly imagine. Since neither candidate has 270 electoral votes, the election goes to the new House. There, with one-state, one-vote, it's a walk for Bush. But the choice of the vice president? That's made by the new Senate. And if Democratic challenger Maria Cantwell outlasts incumbent Slade Gorton to win the Senate seat in Washington, the new Senate is 50-50. So who casts the deciding vote, and elects Joe Lieberman vice president under President Bush? Gore.)

Don't you love the Constitution?

Next, can anyone govern after all of this is sorted out? Of course. Gore can govern the way Clinton is governing now, through a protracted game of chicken with the hard right in Congress. And Bush could govern too -- like Clinton before his impeachment. Remember NAFTA? Welfare reform? Clinton rounded up Democratic votes for a Republican idea.

Bush can do the same for the Democrats on the minimum wage, on prescription drugs, and on an expansion, but not privatization, of Social Security. Bush, it might be added, knows how to do this; he in fact governed this way in Texas.

And finally, as for the great stalemate, the election did have one clean result. I am no longer chairman-designate of the Federal Reserve Board (Nader Administration). It's been a heavy burden; I am relieved to lay it down. I'd rather not preside over the coming slowdown.

What do you think the outcome of the presidential race will be?

A George Bush elected presidency. A Bush-Lieberman administration. A Gore victory after a legal challenge. The Electoral College is attacked, but survives.

See Results

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James K. Galbraith is author of Created Unequal: The Crisis in American Pay (Free Press, 1998) and director of the University of Texas Inequality Project. A professor at the University of Texas at Austin and senior scholar at the Levy Economics Institute, he worked for many years on the staff of the House Banking Committee, where he conducted oversight of the Federal Reserve. He welcomes your feedback and invites you to send it to James K. Galbraith . He voted for Gore.

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