Back in Power

Back in Power
And don't talk to me about the "issues."
BY CLAUDIA ROSETT
Thursday, December 14, 2000 12:01 a.m. EST

It was a night of grace, much needed by the nation and well delivered by both Vice President Al Gore and President-elect George W. Bush. During the campaign, Mr. Gore promised to fight, and he did. Mr. Bush promised to unite, and the signs are that he will do his best to make good.

Soon, we shall return to the gritty realms of daily politics. But for the moment, while we savor an evening of peace and pride in our country, I'd like to offer the tale of a small adventure that befell me in the final hours of the long electoral battle.

There are times when life at the humblest levels seems to offer its own fables of hope. And, as it happened, while the election dispute was going through its final Olympian bout on Tuesday, before the U.S. Supreme Court, I was engaged in my own small quest for power--electrical power, that is. A storm blacked out much of western New York state, including my home on the shores of a farm-county lake. This brought the weird experience of surviving more than 17 hours without constant TV talk of the election.

It also meant going in deep winter weather without light, heat, water and computer access. It was cold, crude and fraught with its own frustrations. But with the din and glare of the chad debates suddenly cleared from the living room, it was also a modest reminder that fate has its own controlling authorities, and can sometimes veer fast in a direction unforeseen. When that happens, you want a few things you can count on.

This episode I'd date from the moment on Monday night when--on a calm wintry evening--I settled down to watch a televised interview with Hillary Clinton, my new senator-elect, on CNN's "Larry King Live." Putting on her First Lady Clinton hat, Hillary told Larry that whenever she walks into the White House she feels "in awe," and added, "we worked very hard to make it our home." I waited for Larry to ask if such family enterprise included sluicing scores of campaign donors through the Lincoln bedroom, or maybe coping with Bill's social activities in the Oval Office. But Larry didn't ask.

So I went to sleep, planning a cozy stint of commentary at the computer the next day, snow outside, warmth and the mutter of CNN indoors, waiting for the latest Supreme Court ruling in the apparently eternal election.

At about 6 a.m., forces of an entirely different order intervened. With 60-mile-an-hour winds and the roar of an express train, the storm that had earlier shut down Chicago and buried Buffalo swept through the Finger Lakes. I woke to the clatter of tree limbs coming down and the final flickering of my driveway lamp, as the power blew out. And I stayed awake to watch maple trees swaying like palms, and to listen to the thud of lawn furniture flung by the wind across the porch. It was exhilarating and scary. It had the feel of those Shakespearean scenes in which foul deeds in politics stir up havoc in nature--Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane; a lioness whelps in the streets. In the weird light of this dawn tempest, I wondered if some power higher even than the Supreme Court had chosen to offer an opinion upon the current state of U.S. politics.

A few hours later, practicalities began to overwhelm the poetry of it all. Power was still out. My laptop computer's battery had run down. I had no source of news, no easy way to file a column--and the pipes in the lakeshore pump house were starting to freeze. I did have a working phone line, and I used it to call the power company. A woman told me there was no information on when power might be restored, but she would report my "issues" to her department.

"I don't have 'issues,' " I told her. "I have a power blackout."

The day wore on. The house got colder. I made a moody trip to the cellar and investigated the furnace, an act about as gratifying as waiting for a Florida slate of electors. There was gas. But without power, the gas could not be switched on. Stymied by technicalities, I went back upstairs and built a fire.

Then, wondering about the Supreme Court vigil, I fished out an old short-wave radio, a relic of my years in the mid-1990s reporting in Russia, and tuned in to news of the nation. Between the hardware and the political chaos, it felt unnervingly like being back in Russia.

Midafternoon, worried about the now definitely chilled pipes in the pump house, I drove 12 miles into town and bought a small gas heater. Everyone was talking about the power problem; but for the first time in more than a month no one was referring to the election.

I drove home and phoned the power company again. And again. After a while, I had worked my way from the big shots in Binghamton--who had no idea what was really going on in the far reaches of their domain--to the local folks whose crews were actually out on the frozen roads, trying to mend the snapped poles and broken lines. But they still had far to go. Desperate by now to make some headway toward meeting my own work deadline, I exhumed the old Olympia manual typewriter from a closet.

By 11 p.m. I had established a new way of life, centered on the power failure. Wrapped in sweaters, scarf and hat, radio propped nearby for occasional bulletins, I set up camp by my own fireplace, typing on the Olympia by candlelight. I felt I'd entered a sort of Al Gore future--a world free of global warming and full of "issues." I had high taxes and no heat, and I was starting to get used to it.

Then the America I like to remember came back. The Supreme Court upheld the Constitution. At 11:20 the lights came back on. And soon after, two repairmen who had labored in the cold to clear a fallen tree from the line came knocking at my door. Danny and Larry. They came in briefly, to make sure everything was all right. They were a microcosm of the country: One was for Bush, the other for Gore. They accepted a ginger snap each, but turned down an offer of hot chocolate--together, they had more lines to clear. They climbed the icy steps back up to their repair truck and drove off into the night. By Wednesday morning, when I turned the television back on, the election wars were over.

Ms. Rosett is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. Her column appears Thursdays on OpinionJournal.com and in The Wall Street Journal Europe as "Letter From America."