And the Winner Is . . .

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E ternal election, perpetual campaign?

Of all the maledictions visited on suffering humanity, on the surface that appears easily the worst. And with the counting done but not finished, with Gore & Co. eyeing the courts for redress in Florida and Bush & Co. threatening to demand fresh tallies in Wisconsin, Iowa, Oregon and New Mexico, the prospect seems very real.

Media pundits huffily denounced the Democrats in their challenge of the results in the Sunshine State as being guilty of the one unpardonable sin -- poor sportsmanship. Anyway, they exclaimed with great exasperation, worst-case scenario is the Republicans stole the election fair and square.

Mr. Gore's supporters complained noisily that the ballot used in Florida was patently unfair because Democrats in the state weren't as smart as Republicans and couldn't figure out how to use the danged thing. Besides, they grumbled, echoing one comedian's line, Bush wasn't really Electoral College material, but his brother got him in.

Instead of wailing and moaning about the sudden and unexpected deadlock of the 2000 presidential election, the good citizens of this blessed nation ought to embrace it. For it opens up exciting new possibilities of governance. Not the least of which is a living trial of running the country without a President.

After all, we've had a lot of vacuums in the office (besides Hoover), and the Republic has survived rather well. So why not merely formalize what has been a kind of ad hoc arrangement and leave the Presidency physically as well as intellectually vacant?

One of the immediate advantages of a blank Presidency is that it assures us of being spared the assumption of the office by either Malaprop Man or the Great Embroiderer. Not the least of longer-term benefits is that it would eliminate those nauseating books by one or another member of the First Family about puppies or kittens.

The absence of a President would vastly increase the value of Presidential news conferences, since there'd be no vapid answers to detract from the illuminating questions. What's more, it could make the White House a paying proposition by straightforwardly renting out the Lincoln Bedroom and similar attractions for cash rather than political contributions.

Those rare times when it might be handy to actually have a warm body around (on such critical occasions as posing with basketball champions or delivering the State of the Union message), there's a sizable store of ex-Presidents (or soon-to-be), starting with Bill Clinton and including Poppy Bush and Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford to call on. A swell bunch all, of course, but they do draw fat stipends, and it doesn't seem too much to ask them in return to perform every now and then as stand-in President.

There might be, we suppose, some legal hangover requiring the presence of a sitting President. Until such an anachronism can be removed via constitutional amendment, an easy solution would be for Dim to occupy the office for six months, to be followed the next six months by Dull. The advantage of this arrangement is twofold. Neither would have sufficient time to do anything substantive. Secondly, it would enable the citizenry to observe the two in a Presidential role and thus firmly eliminate both from contention in 2004.

Why all this fuss, then, about who won the election when it's obvious that, thanks to the uncertainty and as long as it lasts, the real winner is the American people?

S omebody told the stock market it doesn't like uncertainty, so it dutifully decided it doesn't like uncertainty. Trust us, it'll get over it, if only because the stock market has more important things to worry about than who's President.

Like the collapse of the so-called New Economy, which increasingly gets to look like the Old Economy, except more so. The most conspicuous casualties, of course, have been the Internet companies, which proved anew that you can't make up in volume what you lose on each unit sold. The only question for most of them is how long before they go belly-up.

Actually, we suspect that among the thin and straggly ranks of survivors will be our old friend America Online . And we think that simply because, virtually alone among the online outfits, it had the wit to use its hugely inflated stock to buy real assets like magazines and cable and film. Does that make AOL a buy? Not at nearly 100 times trailing earnings. But we're not talking buys, we're talking survival.

As even a casual observer of the investment scene can attest, the damage has hardly been restricted to the fantasy realm where the Web companies reside. Tech's very linchpin -- the personal computer -- is looking much the worse for wear. The action in the stocks of box makers and their varied and sundry suppliers furnish melancholy confirmation of the widespread travail in the industry.

Last week, Dell Computer became the latest and most ponderable producer to lower its growth expectations. The stock, down from nearly 60 to below 30, fell another four-plus points. Micron , now changing hands around 30, is down from over 97. And, for that matter, mighty Intel , has been cut by more than half, to 35 from a peak above 75.

Except to the analysts who follow them, it's no secret that the PC companies are feeling the pain of fierce price competition and slowing growth in demand. And when they wince, their suppliers experience acute agony. Chip inventories are piling up relentlessly, and given the massive sources of supply in Asia, the problem is not exactly local.

The tech stocks, as the above examples nicely illustrate, have taken a ferocious whipping. So has the time come to nibble at the group? Gosh, it sure is tempting.

Maybe it's strictly our incorrigible orneriness, but we have to enter a reluctant demurrer. For one thing, the techs have lost their imagined immunity to the ordinary tugs and pulls of the business cycle. And since everyone but the most rabid technik now sees that the emperor has no clothes, would-be buyers are apt to pay heed to how the

companies are doing, to their, if you'll pardon the expression, fundamentals, rather than their cachet. Who knows how many lost multiple points that change translates into?

As it happens, moreover, there couldn't be a less propitious time for investors to begin to rediscover tech fundamentals. The economy generally is manifestly feeling the pinch of stiff energy costs, high interest rates and the impact on consumers' urge to spend of a limp Nasdaq and an ebbing job boom. And techs get no special dispensation from these distressing trends.

When you narrow the focus to the tech field itself, the picture, if anything, is grimmer. There's glut or the specter of same not only in PCs and chips but all over the lot, from wireless to fiberoptics.

That doesn't mean that after such a rough battering the techs won't bounce when the market rallies on, say, a resolution of the election tangle. Sure they will, and we'd guess pretty vigorously. But once that hurrah is out of the way, it's back to basics, and the basics, as we said, are far from great. Which means the stocks resume their southerly journey.

Steve Leuthold, the canny proprietor of the research group of the same name, sees tech, which still enjoys a 27% weighting in the S&P 500, within 18 months shrinking to as small as a 17% weighting. Steve voices a sentiment we've expressed many a time and oft, that the big-cap tech stocks, like Cisco , Sun Microsystems and EMC , are cruising for a bruising as fund holders try to salvage something from the year by cashing in issues like these that have held up relatively well.

Our feeling is more emphatic, in fact. We're absolutely convinced that the bear market will remain alive and well in these parts until stocks like GE , which for all its virtues certainly doesn't merit a 40 multiple, as well as Cisco et al., have taken their bath.

And no matter who's President.

Up and Down Wall Street, Part 2