A recurring vision: All over

the country, columnists and commentators like me, on deadline, staring

at blank monitors, wondering what in the world they can say that hasn't

already been said, what to offer readers who are swimming through oceans

of ink in search of what?

Hope? Reassurance? Certainty

in a never more uncertain world?

Whichever candidate we favored,

we woke up last Wednesday morning and braced ourselves to click on the

TV and learn who comes next in the litany of American presidents that

begins, "Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, uh..." And we

were just as ignorant as to whose name comes next.

We laughed nervously reading

columns written before Election Day, columns that began, "By the

time you read this, we'll know who our next president is..." I don't

think anyone will be saying that in this week's columns.

The first novel of political

intrigue that I can remember reading was Allen Drury's Pulitzer Prize-winning

"Advise and Consent." It hooked me. I read relatively few books,

but when I do read for pleasure, "inside-Washington" stuff is

my genre.

Earlier this year I read Tom

Clancy's "Debt of Honor," and then continued with "Executive

Orders." The plots are well enough known that I don't think I'm spoiling

anyone's fun by recapping the pivotal event of the two novels. An airliner

crashes into the Capitol, killing the president and nearly every member

of the Cabinet and Congress. Our hero Jack Ryan is suddenly president,

having just been appointed vice president.

But the former VP, whose resignation

was forced, lays claim to the White House. And as in all Clancy tomes,

there are terrorists in disguise, escalating international crises, unpredicted

military strikes and, in this one, gruesome details of a plot to loose

germ warfare in the form of the Ebola virus.

So, I'm reading this improbable

fiction in a boat gently rocking in a Tennessee autumn, and clucking happily,

"Oh, you've gone too far this time, Clancy. These things would never

happen, let alone all at once."

Then we turn on the news: Old

enemies are heating up old conflicts in that part of the world we ironically

call the Holy Land. The Russians lose a submarine in an incident that

could have been scripted by Clancy, and terrorism in a faraway port makes

indelible in our national memory a destroyer named Cole.

Dear God, there's even an outbreak

of Ebola in Africa. And we wake up on a Wednesday after Election Day and

on the Wednesday after that with the presidency still undetermined, and

no promise of resolution any time soon, and we wonder why we have a hard

time sorting fact from fiction.

We're living the history of

the United States written by Tom Clancy. Who would believe such a plot?

Any of the subplots is incredible enough: A first lady who will be sworn

into the Senate at about the time most of us were betting she'd be in

court filing for divorce. A dead man elected to the Senate.

A senator whose flexible party

loyalty allowed him to hedge his bets if he gets to be vice president

after all, his Democratic Senate seat goes to a Republican, another shift

in a balance of power that ebbs and flows from one side of that chamber

to the other with every vote count.

Or recount. Who would believe

such a plot? Out of 50 states 50! and it comes down to Florida to decide

this dead-even election. Don't you know Jeb Bush cries in the dark of

night, "Why me, Lord? Why Florida? There are 49 other states you

could have picked on. Why mine?"

All of us want a sense of control

over our destinies, a sense that everything's going to work out all right,

that some wise someone has a solution for every problem.

Look at what we do when we

lose control: we make jokes. This thing will provide as much material

for comedians as for historians. The line, "You don't have to be

snippy about it," will go right up there with, "Where's the

beef?: and "Whassup?"

Thank goodness we can depend

on Andy Rooney to top off "Sixty Minutes" with a trenchant witticism.

Right, Andy? Andy?

Many of us reassured each other,

in the closing days of the campaign, "Whoever wins, the wonderful

thing about this country is that we'll go on with our national life seamlessly,

in accordance with the Constitution and the law. Once the ballots are

counted, we'll lay aside our differences, there will be no armed troops

patrolling, no demonstrations in the streets."

Less than a week later, crowds

bearing placards are shoving each other in the streets of West Palm Beach

of all places, and uniformed officers are toting side arms and bags of

ballots, guarding election personnel whose faces are absolutely drained

of humanity.

Our ordeal is nothing, however,

to that of the candidates. The worst part of it for them may be the fact

that they are used to being in control and were poised to take on a position

with more intrinsic power than perhaps any other on earth. And suddenly

they don't even know where to have their mail forwarded in January.

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