AMERICA DECIDES

The Republican presidential nominee launched his drive for the White House, as tradition decreed, over the Labor Day weekend. In shirtsleeves, with the Statue of Liberty shimmering behind him in the heat of New York harbor, he spoke at a New Jersey rally: an unseen member of the audience was destiny.

The campaign, of course, was already middle-aged by then, and it still had more than two months to run. But finally, the hundreds of days dwindled down to a precious one. As the shadow of night retreated westward across the continent, Americans awoke on Tuesday to an unfamiliar sound: silence. The speeches had all been made, the plans and programs all recited. Hoarse and bone-weary, candidates for office at every level hauled themselves out of bed; principals in the long drama, they now could merely join the audience for the final act of voting.

The day brought millions of repetitions of a paradox: making a ballot is an intensely private act of enormous public consequence. And scarcely had the electorate sat down to watch itself on TV when it learned what it had done. An incumbent President was resoundingly defeated: the voters had given Ronald Reagan a place in history. The rippling affect of Nov. 4 will be felt for years, yet it all stemmed from choices made in a voting booth, that unique envelope of solitude. This peaceable allocation of vast power was, as ever, the most remarkable aspect of Election Day.

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