Washington ? Al Gore is back, breathing fire and revising history. His fire Ãi¿½” that BushâÂÂs economic policy is âÂÂcatastrophicâ and his foreign policy goal is world domination Ãi¿½” is harmless. His revisionism is not.

Barbara Walters recently asked him if there were times during the 36-days of Florida turmoil when he thought he was going to be president. He answered:

âÂÂYes. Specifically, when the Florida Supreme Court ruled that they would have to actually count all the ballots. ThatâÂÂs all I asked for. Count all the ballots. I asked them to count them statewide. They were focusing in on four counties, but they shouldâÂÂve been counted statewide as well.âÂÂ

Well. Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. GoreâÂÂs historical fiction demands refutation.

When the election ended with George Bush 537 votes ahead, Gore initiated litigation that placed the U.S. Supreme Court in this dilemma: It could either allow FloridaâÂÂs Supreme Court, composed entirely of Democratic appointees, to decide the presidency with a series of decisions which revised Florida election law in ways favorable to Gore, or it could restrain FloridaâÂÂs court, thereby seeming to act politically.

The U.S. court was forced into this controversy by the Constitution, which empowers state legislatures to set election laws. FloridaâÂÂs Supreme Court breezily dismissed the LegislatureâÂÂs deadlines for counting votes and certifying results as âÂÂhypertechnical reliance upon statutory provisions.âÂÂ

After the Nov. 26 deadline improvised by FloridaâÂÂs court (extended from Nov. 14) for official results, Bush was declared the winner. A trial court affirmed this because Gore had failed to show any abuse of discretion in vote-counting.

But FloridaâÂÂs Supreme Court ruled, 4-3, that Gore should be given various additional benefits he had requested (inclusion of results of a late recount in one heavily Democratic county, and completion of the recount in another such county). And it ordered something no one had requested Ãi¿½” a statewide recount of all âÂÂundervotes,â meaning ballots voters had marked in ways not readable by the counting machines.

Never mind what Gore told Barbara Walters. GoreâÂÂs lawyers did not seek a statewide recount of undervotes. BushâÂÂs lawyers, too, did not seek a statewide recount, but argued that under Florida law Ãi¿½” which was rapidly being superceded in the state supreme courtâÂÂs legislating Ãi¿½” any recount had to be statewide, and by then such a recount was impracticable, hence there should be no recount. And certainly not one targeted to pockets of GoreâÂÂs strength.

But FloridaâÂÂs court failed to provide consistent and uniform standards for recognizing a legal vote. Local jurisdictions controlled by Democrats seemed to be changing standards until they found ones that would produce the outcomes they favored.

Because one voterâÂÂs ballot could be valid and another voterâÂÂs identically marked ballot could be invalid, seven of the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices Ãi¿½” including Stephen Breyer, a Clinton appointee, and David Souter, another member of the courtâÂÂs liberal faction Ãi¿½” agreed that the Florida courtâÂÂs terms for ordering a statewide manual recount of undervotes violated the constitutional guarantees of due process and equal protection of the laws.

Worse, because more blatantly partisan, was the Florida courtâÂÂs order that new votes already found in a recount of all ballots in the most heavily Democratic precincts of Miami-Dade County would be counted, but only undervotes would be recounted in the remaining precincts, which included heavily Republican neighborhoods of Cuban-Americans.

Gore supporters say conservatives should fault the U.S. Supreme Court for judicial activism. But the courtâÂÂs act of restraining the unconstitutional activism of FloridaâÂÂs Supreme Court was strict construction of the Constitution, not judicial activism.

The mantra of some Gore supporters is that President Bush was âÂÂselected, not elected.â But from the moment that GoreâÂÂs litigation achieved its aim of triggering the activism of FloridaâÂÂs Supreme Court, the country was condemned to a process in which finality would be enforced by that court or the U.S. Supreme Court.

Gore could have become president only if a seven-justice majority of the U.S. Supreme Court had flinched from finding constitutional infirmity in rules made up on the fly by FloridaâÂÂs court. That is, Gore could have become president only by being selected by the Florida courtâÂÂs improvisations that supplanted statutes Ãi¿½” improvisations that even included ordering the review of certified results from counties whose results had not been contested, and which were not parties to the litigation.

Gore bears the burden of demonstrating why superior legitimacy would have attached to the result that FloridaâÂÂs court strained to achieve than to the result the U.S. court sealed.

Ãi¿½” George Will is a columnist for Washington Post Writers Group.