Michael Dukakis does a good job of describing life on the wrong side of a presidential election: "You want to know about losing?" he asks in a recent interview. "It stinks. Winning is a lot better."
George McGovern, who lost resoundingly to Richard Nixon in 1972, recalls the silence, the loneliness. "Where did all those voters go? Where were those huge crowds on election day?" he asks. "You have a huge sense that the country deserted you and left you alone."
George W. Bush and Al Gore will both enter elite clubs. One will become president-elect; the other will be the man who lost the 21st century's first election. The world will hang on one's every word; life for the other will get very quiet, very fast.
For McGovern, "to be defeated by Nixon was more painful to handle than if I had been defeated by Eisenhower or someone of that calibre." Only when Watergate broke did McGovern feel "clearly vindicated".
McGovern says he ran into Walter Mondale a few months after Mondale lost to Ronald Reagan in 1984. Mondale had one question for McGovern: how long does it take, after losing 49 states, to quit hurting?
"I said, `I'll let you know after I get there,"' McGovern recounted. "I was joking. On the emotional front I don't think it took longer than a year. But I still have a poignancy if someone mentions `72'."
President Ford was luckier in loss. Pardoning Nixon led to Ford's 1976 defeat by Jimmy Carter, but that same action helped close a painful chapter in American history.
Regardless of defeat's various shadings, historians, former candidates and psychiatrists say that Gore or Bush can expect a few constants in the days and months beyond the 2000 campaign:
Depression. A dose of self-blame, or perhaps a feeling of betrayal. A body clock tossed out of order by 18 months of time-zone confusion. Extreme fatigue. Guilt.
"A kind of malaise falls over you, and you realise you had the main chance and you blew it," says Douglas Brinkley, Carter's historian. "You start looking for scapegoats. It takes a while for [losing candidates] to look in the mirror and understand most of their shortcomings were their own."
And the loser is not the only one hurting. The pain of a presidential defeat ripples out to touch staffers, friends, family members, especially wives. Elizabeth Dole, say Republican sources, took her husband's loss harder than he did. So did Rosalyn Carter and Kitty Dukakis, to name a few.
Jimmy Carter, in fact, is perhaps the best example of defeat's many faces - a bitter loss, a bright resurrection. Carter was beaten by a man he held in such contempt that, to this day, "mention Ronald Reagan and see the hair raise on [Carter's] neck," Brinkley says.
During the primary season, a New Hampshire child asked George W. Bush how he would feel if he lost. First he expressed confidence about his chances. Then he levelled with the elementary-school audience. "I wouldn't like it for a period of time," he said. "I'm a competitive guy. I work hard. But I understand that sometimes you just don't get what you want in life."
Scholars and psychoanalysts posit that the more laid-back Bush would handle loss better than his aggressive opponent. Gore's parents groomed him to lead the nation, and he would be at loose ends come January if the biggest political prize eludes him.