On election day, November 7, 2000, Susan and I camped out in Austin’s Four Seasons Hotel, along with Dick and Lynne Cheney and several hundred other friends and family of the candidates. From the beginning, it was clear that it would be a long night.

Dick was bone weary. Even as his fate was being sorted out in election counting rooms across the nation, he kept nodding. “Go take a nap,” we finally said, and he gave up and slipped away to his bedroom. A restless George W. Bush and his family, including his father, were gathered in the governor’s mansion a short distance away to watch election results and prepare for what might come.

Florida was the make-or-break state. A few minutes before 8.00pm Eastern time, the networks called Florida for Al Gore. There were two problems with this. First, people were still voting in the panhandle section of Florida. Second, it was not an accurate call.

The Bush campaign quickly issued a statement quarrelling with the call, and by 10.00pm Eastern time, all networks had backed down and put the state back in the undecided column.

Finally, at 2.16am Eastern time, Fox News Channel called Florida for Bush, and the other networks quickly followed. A few minutes later, Vice-President Gore telephoned Governor Bush to concede. That was the traditional signal that it was all over but the shouting, so Susan and I went back to our room, got our stuff, and headed down to the hotel lobby.

While Al Gore was being driven to a rally in Nashville, aides told him the Bush lead in Florida was down to a few thousand votes and falling. He quickly telephoned George W. to retract his earlier private concession. “Our campaign continues,” Gore’s campaign chairman told the waiting crowd. Shortly afterward, the networks backed down once again. Too close to call, they said, finally getting it right. Florida was still in play.

A bit more than five weeks later, the president-elect showed his gratitude by seating Susan and me in very prominent seats for his inauguration. When we arrived for the swearing-in, Secret Service agents, whom we knew from the Reagan and first Bush administrations, shook our hands and escorted us to our places.

As Susan and I waited, Vice-President Gore and Tipper descended the aisle to their front-row seats. “Hello,” Tipper said cheerily to Susan. She acknowledged me somewhat more coolly perhaps. “Oh, hello.” “Hi, Jim. How are you?” Al said more evenly. “Fine, thank you, Mr Vice-President,” I responded.

President and Senator Clinton soon followed. He stopped on the way down, motioned me from my seat, and whispered, “You were good in Florida. Really good.”

After the ceremony, he stopped again. “I told those people that if they continued to play by the Marquess of Queensberry rules, you were gonna beat their brains out,” he said sotto voice (sic).

With all due respect to the 42nd president, the two major reasons we won in Florida were simpler. First, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had more votes.

They had more votes on election day, more votes when the dispute ended 36 days later, and more votes every day in between. And, although this was legally irrelevant, Bush-Cheney also had more votes in the media recounts that followed.