Smith was also a former small-town civics teacher, less jaded than most of his colleagues in Congress, and Bush v. Smith was one of the hardest of Red America's hardliners, a passionate antiabortion, antigay, antitax Republican, and he believed he was watching a struggle for the soul of his country. Inside the Court's marble-and-mahogany chambers, Senator Robert Smith of New Hampshire watched the legal jousting with genuine awe. After five weeks of ferocious wrangling over "pregnant chads" and "hanging chads," hard-liners in both camps were warning of an illegitimate presidency, a constitutional crisis, a bloodless coup. The deadlocked election had exposed a divided nation, and pundits were describing Governor Bush's "Red America" and Vice President Gore's "Blue America" as if they were separate countries at war. Albert Gore Jr., et al., the partisan battle royale that would end the stalemate over the Florida recount and send one of the litigants to the White House.
On December 11, 2000, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in George W.
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