By the time you read this, we might know the Florida vote totals and, perhaps, the identity of the new president.

If Vice President Al Gore is awarded the thousands of "pregnant" chads, he'll gain Florida's 25 electoral votes and lose his "vice." If Texas Gov. George W. Bush's lead survives the varied recounts, the air of inevitability that pervaded his campaign will settle in --big time. He already had been choosing a Cabinet until dogged by criticism that picking an administration before being declared president was a bit, shall we say ... premature.

But in the uncharted regions we now roam, even those outcomes are not assured. Without precedent to steady our course, we find ourselves engaged in a grand act of improvisation--like a jazz composition. We know the broad themes: democracy, rule of law, fairness, timeliness, etc. But how those themes are measured, blended and harmonized is a work in progress. And we all are involved; like a jazz performance, players and listeners are linked through a dense interplay of expectation, tradition and chance.

There has been one consistently discordant note in this composition, however. The combative rhetoric of the Republicans, including the Bush campaign, is too shrill. Effective democracies demand the loser accept the winner's legitimacy. But the Bush folks are acting as if their designated candidate already has captured the presidency and Gore's pesky, but inauthentic, supporters must learn to live with that reality. Republican attacks on the Democrats' electoral tactics seem designed, maliciously, to undermine Gore's legitimacy.

And Gore Democrats aren't the only targets of the GOP's imperious self-righteousness. These fire breathing supporters of America's foremost "compassionate conservative" seem willing to deny the legitimacy of any U.S. institution that gets in the way of Bush's ascension.

This intemperate tone was cued early on when former Secretary of State James Baker--widely billed as a "wise man" with the gravitas needed for such a somber task-- quickly went on the offensive. Perhaps he was provoked by the early bellicosity of Gore campaign manager William Daley, but Baker's insolence set the mold for the GOP's defiant reaction to this dispute.

These GOP overreactions are difficult to understand unless seen as components of an overall Republican syndrome that links Bush inevitability to an almost metaphysical hatred for the wily lame duck, Bill Clinton. The same hatred that blinded the impeachment lynch mob to public sentiment is blinding these rabid Bush partisans to the negative consequences of their irresponsible rhetoric.

The Bush campaign has pushed the notion of their man's inevitability since the post debate days when the governor began leading in the polls. It's an attitude that casts Gore as an inconvenience, at best. And it has worked. How else to explain the rush of "advice" urging Gore to drop out, even though he received the most popular votes and, absent Florida, the most electoral votes as well. Unfortunately, it's also an attitude adopted by the media. Bullied by the right-wing canard that the corporate media are liberal, the Fourth Estate has been intimidated into irrelevance during a time when journalistic ballast is needed to calm the dangerous bluster of the GOP. Wary of being pegged as Gore supporters by GOP "liberal-baiters," the media also failed to follow-up on very credible reports that African-American voters were harassed and their votes suppressed in several Florida cities.

The notion of journalist as an impartial chronicler of events also took a dive when it was revealed that John Ellis, who was responsible for Fox News Channel's projection of Bush as Florida winner, is a cousin of the Bushes. Rupert Murdoch, the right-wing media mogul who owns the channel, reportedly found nothing improper in Ellis' behavior. Murdoch's Fox News Channel is boldly conservative in tone and delights in flouting television news' hidebound traditions. As of yet, there are no unapologetically "liberal" news channels with Fox's admirable audacity.

If any did exist, they would be complaining loudly about the GOP's perilous tactics. They would note the reappearance of those "angry white men" who seemingly disappeared during the Clinton boom years. We would be advised that C-Span again is all a-crackle with veiled and unveiled threats from 2nd Amendment revolutionaries.

Perhaps even Republicans would begin to understand that without respect for the common themes, jazz becomes noise.

Salim Muwakkil is a senior editor at In These Times.

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