Last night's spectator sport

There were face painters, cheesesteaks and Tastykakes. There was a funky band and TV hook-ups for each of the networks, with CNN on the big screen. There was birch beer and free Polaroids; Uncle Sam made balloon animals. The Hall of Flags hosted a bipartisan shindig to watch the election returns, and a stream of young politicos turned on and turned out. Near a flag proclaiming "lux et veritas," a bag lady pulled up a chair, and polishing off her free Philly pretzel, she proclaimed that we had a good view of the proceedings. Bundled in layers and ruddy-faced, Cathy is a Houston Hall regular who "came to see Bush get elected and eat Pat's steaks." Early on, Gore won Maine's electoral votes, and a few distinctly female voices raised a whoop. Sweet, young women wore balloon animals on their head while we watched Larry King interview Anne Richards. James Baker predicted a McGovern-Nixon-style slaughter. At 8:45 p.m., Bush had 130 electoral votes, Gore 122. I admired the fine wood paneling of Houston Hall, and men scoped out women and vice versa. At 8:55 p.m., the networks declared Pennsylvania for Gore. A large whoop went up. The mood was young and fiery. The networks declared Florida for Gore and the crowd went wild. "I was always confident," College sophomore Brian Ehrlich said. "But all in all, it doesn't have a great impact, since it doesn't do anything more than enable a signal to go out that Bush is on the defensive." I asked Uncle Sam what he thought, and he made me a balloon animal hat. "It's wonderful to be American," he said, putting it on my head. At 9 p.m., Gore leads 145-130. Hillary Clinton wins New York and Lazio concedes soon after. The men boo and the women cheer. A woman confides that she peed next to Andrea Mitchell at the Republican National Convention. Another argued that New York is not really Hillary's place, and wrinkled a button nose. Another woman said that she preferred not to have Hillary win due to a perceived sense of carpetbagging. The lights went out and the room became very intimate. Pairs began looking into each other's eyes, and the action on the big board seemed far away. Then the lights came back on again. At 9:15, Bush trailed 192-153, according to the networks. Women began to arrive in glitter and tank tops, and men followed them around at a distance, causing the room to churn in circular loops. At 9:30, Bush pulled ahead and multilayered Cathy jumped up and exclaimed "BUSH! BUSH! BUSH!" and held up her fingers in V-signs. Cheers mixed with obscenities in the back. An administrator complemented the bipartisan tone and good cheer. The networks took Florida away from Gore. Emotions overflowed, and little spats broke out. "No way man, I don't care if he wins the popular vote, we bet electoral vote," two friends argued. Missouri delivered itself to Bush, solidifying the red blocks for Bush in the Midwest. "I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me," Willard Duncan Vandiver said in 1899, giving the best advice one can muster to an American candidate and a slogan for a cryptic license plate. At 11 p.m. Gore takes 231, Bush 217. "Democracy, is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike," Plato said. It strikes me as true now. Cathy and I both love a free pretzel. "In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist," Rousseau said. I thought he had his own times to contend with, not ours, and I pondered the wonders of the big board of blue, red and yellow states. "Democracy is, by the nature of it, a self-canceling business, and gives in the long run a net result of zero," Thomas Carlyle said, but he didn't tell you how to not get your hopes up too high. The crowd falls for it every time.

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