When Bush spokeswoman Karen Hughes faced reporters after the sun came up Wednesday morning, she - and they - was still dazed and confused. "I watched it this morning on television in excerpts, and I thought maybe it had all been a dream, and then I realized I was awake the whole time," she said. The entire shape and design of the past 18 months have been for the campaigns to look presidential, as if by appearing so they were so. Their confidence raised them all that money and helped them resist all that advice from Washington. And so Bush aides carefully leaked that Dick Cheney would be heading the transition effort and would be assisted by Colin Powell. Andrew Card, the deputy chief of staff under President Bush, would now be chief of staff. Several photo ops were staged with Bush and his Cabinet-in-waiting to show that this certification was just a matter of time, so he'd better get down to business. "There was some internal debate about beginning the transition," says a Republican in touch with Austin. "Does it seem arrogant and overconfident, or does that project assurance?"

When Bush himself appeared outside the Governor's mansion, he said that "America has a long tradition of uniting once elections are over." He held out an olive branch to Gore's supporters: "I want to assure them that should the election go the way that we think it will that I will work hard to earn their confidence."

But he wasn't taking any chances. All through his campaign Bush had been careful to keep his father's closest friends and retainers at some distance to avoid all that dynasty talk. But the moment the battle was over and the war began, it was the fabulous Bush and Baker boys all over again. Hughes described Baker as "a calming presence." His nickname in Washington is the Velvet Hammer.

And he needed to be, since the Bushes' own party wanted to go to war. "Austin is lying back," says a party source. "They don't realize this is not about Flordia. It is about the whole damn election." The resentment went back to the last days of the campaign. Bush's team had made a stop in California the week before the election that seemed truly idiotic to friends at the Republican National Committee in Washington. Republicans thought the Texan was just coasting in at the end. On the Sunday nine days before the vote, Bush was at home. Gore was out working just as hard as ever.

So the wise men in D.C. began to weigh in. "Do they know what they're up against?" asked a befuddled Bush supporter in Congress. The old and deep bitterness over alleged Democratic dirty tricks also bubbled up like a hot spring. Senators and Congressmen were calling officials at the r.n.c. saying, "Don't let them get away with it."

Gore meanwhile called in a Secretary of State of his own, Warren Christopher, whose primary role was to stand up and look grave and reliable and say that "we are not on the edge of a constitutional crisis, and we don't intend to provoke a constitutional crisis." Gore himself made a statement in the afternoon - measured, careful and, to the true believers, infuriating. Gore and Christopher and Daley were all the types who take the long view. But the activists felt cheated and disfranchised and were looking for Fighting Al.

The heart of the fight was those confusing Palm Beach ballots. Some 19,000 had been thrown out because voters had punched two holes for President: an additional 10,000 did not register any presidential choice.Hearing about the design problem, other voters in the county became convinced on Wednesday that they had accidentally voted for Buchanan, whose total of 3,407 votes in the county was three times as high as in neighboring counties with different-style ballots. Buchanan himself, never one to miss a chance to stir hot soup if it could spill on someone named Bush, went on the air and said he did not think all those votes had been intended for him. With Bush emerging from the initial count with a 1,784-vote lead, this could mean the margin of victory for Gore.

When they looked closely as the recount was getting under way, Democrats noticed that in other counties with punch ballots, a disproportionate number had nobody voting for President. In Broward alone, which gave Gore 68% of its vote, there were 6,686 ballots that did not register a presidential vote. In Pinellas, election authorities figured out this problem and began removing the little hanging flap from the punch cards, although they didn't catch all the faulty ballots before the full recount was completed. Nonetheless, Gore picked up 417 votes there, and now it became important for Democrats to press for a hand count.

That is also why, as the legally required machine recount was taking place, both sides ramped up the war of words. By Thursday, Daley wasn't doing a very good job of containing his anger. He accused the Bush team of trying to "presumptively crown themselves the victors, to try to put in place a transition," thereby running "the risk of dividing the American people." With that the markets began to wobble, the nasdaq bungie-jumping 87 points before springing back up again.

"Daley really hit a nerve," says a top aide in the Bush camp. Said another Republican in Washington, in a not so veiled reference to Daley's father's reputation as the Chicago mayor who cooked elections: "The idea of being lectured on the sanctity of the ballot by Daley is pretty galling to Republicans. It's like waving a red flag." Bush campaign chairman Evans denounced the Democrats for "politicizing and distorting these events at the expense of our democracy."

Already the pressure was building. By the time the recount was over, Bush's original margin had sagged to a mere 327 votes, but he remained ahead. Prominent Democrats like New Jersey Senator Bob Torricelli and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich called on the Gore campaign not to lawyer the race to death. Editorial pages looked for the Maginot Line.

The Gore camp tried to get a sense of where the public stood, how long it could fight on. But officials said they were not able to poll the issue because there is no money to pay for it. As of 5 p.m. Friday, the campaign ceased to exist legally. Everyone was ordered to turn in cell phones, laptops and pagers.

But the campaigns had already disintegrated and re-formed like little blobs of mercury. Partisans outside the circle were starting to pick up clubs and sticks of their own. "The longer this goes on, the less control the people at the center have," says a Republican Party official. "The great illusion in Austin and Nashville is that they can control the tens of millions of Americans who are interested in this."

As war was breaking out between the two camps, there was one corner of political cordiality in America on Thursday night, and it took place, of all places, as close to the presidency as any of the two pretenders could hope to be last week, between the two men who propelled them into the race. The former Presidents and First Ladies gathered at the White House to celebrate its 200th anniversary, and the buzz in the room was all about the history that was being made that week. Bush smiled his way through, gracious to everyone, but now and then he would mutter out of the side of his mouth to friends, "I've never been through anything like this." Barbara Bush confided to a friend, "I was the mother of a President for 30 minutes, and I loved it." When it came time to speak, both the President and the former President tried to reach across the breach. Bush talked about the pride he and Barbara had in their son, and Clinton told of the pride they deserved to feel. The two men had been seen talking alone, smiling and nodding. Bush was scheduled to leave on a late flight to Spain to go hunting with the King, so he left early. But he came back a few minutes later when told that his plane had broken down in the Midwest. It was as if the citizens' house had momentarily cast a spell and was nudging for a reconciliation.