Perhaps most surprising, nationally Mr Gore received 90 per cent of the black vote, more even than the 84 per cent achieved by Bill Clinton in 1996.The Jackson crusade in Florida meanwhile has had the effect partially of resurrecting the black-Jewish coalition that flourished in America in the Sixties but vanished later as relations between the two groups soured. Mr Jackson himself contributed to that process when, in his 1984 presidential bid, he was caught referring to Jews as “Hymies” and New York as “Hymietown”.But at every rally in Florida, Mr Jackson has appeared with prominent Rabbis at his side. Some will thank him for that, regardless of whether Mr Gore finally wins. “Now, we blacks and Jews find ourselves fighting old battles we thought we had won,” Mr Jackson declared at last weekend’s Miami hearing “We must stand together or we will perish alone.”. One thing that Al Gore and his advisers have learnt quickly in the protracted post-electoral struggle for power is that the Bush family is a many-tentacled creature. One thing that Al Gore and his advisers have learnt quickly in the protracted post-electoral struggle for power is that the Bush family is a many-tentacled creature.
In the autumn campaign it seemed so easy to make light of their opponent, George W Bush, with his uncertain grasp of facts, linguistic stumbles and seeming lack of interest in the nitty-gritty of politics. But Mr Bush has shown himself to be just one of many faces in a grimly determined family organisation, one that more often resembles a powerful corporation than simply a collection of blood-relatives accustomed to the corridors of power.As the battle for Florida has unfolded, one family connection after another has come to the fore.

George W himself may be keeping himself well out of it – he has remained largely secluded at his Texas ranch, playing with his dog, Spot, and discussing plans for an outbuilding with a local architect – but there are plenty of Bush retainers, friends and acolytes to do the work for him.The governor of Florida is George’s younger brother, Jeb, and from the beginning of the campaign the family has viewed the state and its 25 electoral votes as something of a birthright. Jeb, Republicans were assured, would “deliver” Florida for George – despite repeated polls suggesting the voters were leaning Mr Gore’s way.Jeb, in turn, is good friends with Katherine Harris, the Florida secretary of state who has taken the lead role in attempting to quash the manual recounts that Republicans fear could hand Florida, and the presidency, to Mr Gore. When Ms Harris ran for office in 1998, she called in Jeb’s old campaign manager, Mac Stipanovich. When George W began his presidential run, she was one of the first to rush to New Hampshire to support him. When the election was looming, she hired an old Bush family favourite, retired general and Gulf War hero Norman Schwarzkopf, to film a taxpayer-funded get-out-the-vote advert for television.

Last week, when Ms Harris was looking for legal support to help her to understand her options in the electoral miasma, she turned to a law firm known for its ties to the Bush family, Steel, Hector and Davis.And so the chain runs. Back in Texas, George W has been assembling some of Papa Bush’s old chums for presumptuously premature transition talks: figures from George Sr’s administration such as Colin Powell (another Gulf War hero), Andy Card (a former transportation secretary), Larry Lindsey (an economic adviser, now tipped as a possible treasury secretary), and of course the man on the vice-presidential ticket, former defence secretary Dick Cheney.The man George W sent to Florida as his advocate was his dad’s secretary of state, James Baker. As if any further throwback to an earlier era was needed, Mr Baker has treated Florida in much the same way as he might have treated a corrupt but strategically important Third World country in the days of the Cold War. The strategy, then as now, is to identify the man you want to rule the country, then dress him up in all manner of grand democratic rhetoric while in fact doing everything possible to quash the spirit of true democracy.When Mr Baker heard a legal ruling he liked on Friday morning – a decision supporting Ms Harris’s refusal to consider manual recounts – he crowed that “the rule of law has prevailed”. When the Florida state supreme court contradicted the ruling a few hours later, the rule of law suddenly didn’t seem so attractive and he made no mention of it.The Bush family’s unerring sense of entitlement has had its psychological effect in this crisis, creating, to some degree successfully, a sense of inevitability about a future President George W Bush. Maureen Dowd in the New York Times last week characterised the family mantra as: “We were born to rule We know best.

Leave it to us.”Curiously, the broader Republican Party is quite happy with that attitude. As the old seadogs of Cold War foreign policy might have put it: he may be a son of a Bush, but at least he’s our son of a Bush.. Florida’s absentee voters yesterday gave George W Bush the lead that he had been expecting, when he called the Bush clan to his mansion in Austin, Texas, to celebrate his confirmation as next president of the United States. But, unfortunately for the family and its hangers-on, the celebration was again put on hold, thwarted by a judicial ruling that swung in favour of his rival and now bitter enemy, Vice-President Gore. Florida’s absentee voters yesterday gave George W Bush the lead that he had been expecting, when he called the Bush clan to his mansion in Austin, Texas, to celebrate his confirmation as next president of the United States.