"We have just entered the Twilight Zone of American politics," said an exhausted member of Al Gore's staff after an incredible night which saw his boss concede the election and then withdraw the concession.
It is a good description of what most people are feeling in Washington in this crazy week when America's 200-year-old system of picking a president became a joke around the world.
Countries that are regularly lectured by the US on the need for fair, transparent elections are now chuckling as the paragon of democracy tries to explain that it is democratic to have a president elected who did not win the most votes. The waiting for Florida, home to Disney World, to decide the leader of the world is "political coitus interruptus" according to another exhausted observer.
And the "interruptus" will go on for at least another week as we wait for sailors on aircraft carriers and soldiers in Kosovo to mail their votes to the Sunshine State. In other elections these absentee ballots could be ignored but now the world is hanging on the choice of GI Joe.
And then there is the Electoral College - college is a misnomer as it has no address and the members never get together. The electors, usually party hacks, don't make their choice until December 18th - another five weeks - for the next president. The 98 million Americans who voted last Tuesday were technically electing the 538 electors in the 50 states, not Al Gore or George Bush.
These electors are supposed to cast their votes for the candidate who won the popular vote in each state. But some of them may yet turn out to be "faithless electors" who do their own thing and "vote their conscience".
That could be another descent into the Twilight Zone as a tie in the college would mean the election is passed over to the new House of Representatives to pick a president. And if that did not work, then the Senate would have a go.
It is amazing to think America has got away with "normal" presidential elections for so long. In the 19th century, there were a few times when the system creaked badly and presidents were pushed into the White House by dubious methods. But since 1888, the Electoral College majority reflected the popular vote and everyone was happy.
Richard Nixon in 1960 was narrowly done out of victory by John F. Kennedy, whose campaign was suspected of drumming up phoney votes with his father's money and Mayor Richard Daley's help in Chicago. This helped to push Kennedy over the top in the electoral college.
Some are now savouring the historic irony it is Mayor Daley's son, William, who is now, on Al Gore's behalf, crying "foul" over the Bush vote in Florida.
Nixon was urged to look for a recount but refused. He wrote in his autobiography, Six Crises: "If I were to demand a recount, the organisation of the new administration and the orderly transfer of responsibility from the old to the new might be delayed for months. The situation within the federal government would be chaotic."
Those were his public reasons. Privately he is said to have calculated that the country would see him as a bad loser and never forgive him. By accepting defeat, he could try another time and this is what he did eight years later and succeeded.
Mr Gore had less inhibitions about a recount. One was automatic under Florida rules as Mr Bush's lead was less than 2000 in six million votes cast. But Mr Gore could have waived his right to the recount. His staff point out, however, that unlike Nixon, Gore was ahead at that stage in the popular vote in the rest of the country. But this is not strictly relevant under the electoral college system which is only interested in the popular vote in each state, not in the whole country.
But if Gore loses the recount and goes on to make a series of court challenges, would that make for a "chaotic" situation in Washington as envisaged by Nixon?
A lot of people hoping for a plum job in the new Administration - there will be thousands - will have to wait longer to know if they can move their furniture to Washington but that would hardly be "chaotic". After all, President Clinton will be in the White House until January 20th, so there will not exactly be a vacuum. By all accounts, Clinton's own transition process was fairly chaotic without any need for recounts when he defeated Bush senior in 1992. "He did not announce a single personnel selection until six weeks after the election and waited almost until the inauguration to assemble much of his White House staff," the Washington Post recalled in an article a week ago on transition periods. Both Gore and Bush have been discreetly working on their transitions, even before the election, so as to get a head start. Roy Neel, a former Gore chief of staff, has said it is vital to assemble a good team during this 10week period or "you're going to stumble and you'll have huge lost opportunities". A new administration is often defined by your mistakes and your successes in the early stages, according to Neel.
As the present impasse sends tremors throughout the land, it is chastening to realise that only half the people of voting age bothered to vote in this election.
How are the others feeling today? A few thousand of them could have rescued us from the Twilight Zone.