It's a snaky run of nervous energy, the marble and granite plaza at the hilly centre of this capital city. Police officers on balky horses, 200 blow-dried TV heads posing for cameras.
A statue of Andrew Jackson glowers in the foreground. (Is it worth noting that Jackson once won the popular vote but lost the election in the electoral college? Portents everywhere!)
And in an alley off the plaza, David Tucker smiles soft and talks life and politics as though he has all the time in the world. The tall and elegant man recalls nights long ago passed in rice paddies and jungle hills as an army special forces sergeant. He's content to be a quiet half-block from history now.
"I'm a true Tennessean and I'd love to see my man, Al Gore, giving his speech," he says. He's a parking-garage manager now, and his radio rattles in his office. "But I've been at the hot, hot centre of history. Seen a lot of men lose their lives. Now, in my 67th year, I'm happy to listen, cross my fingers and hope."
Tuesday night, in this handsome city, there's a sense of time suspended. Restaurants stay open until 3 and 4 a.m., campaign workers pace hotel lobbies and bars, police ask reporters for the latest electoral buzz. As the election results flicker on the 10-foot screens, voices rise in cheers - "Florida, YES!" - or fall into glum silence - "Ohio, no". The networks sashay back and forth on what seemed like sure things.
All day long thousands of Democrats descended on this place. On a mid-afternoon flight into Nashville from Washington DC, the aisles were a skein of antsy angst, passengers searching each other's jackets and shirts for the telltale Gore-Lieberman buttons and lapel pins. The shared tribal mark found, the questions tumble out.
"Are we going to make it? Are we going to make it?"
"Hope so, hope so. We have to, don't we? Yes?"
By the end of the flight, as the jet bounces along its final descent, a woman with bobbed hair and a most intense aspect calls out the exit polling numbers that are coming in on her beeper.
At the Sheraton Nashville at 9:55 p.m. Doug Hattaway, the Gore campaign's dapper spinner, walks into the press centre. The ballroom has turned into a manic newsroom, serried rows of reporters tapping on their laptops and trading in a rich market of unsubstantiated rumour and speculation. Hattaway takes his place on a podium, framed by two potted trees. He peers out at the reporters and says . . . just about . . . nothing.
"Al and Tipper ate chicken and potatoes with Mom in Carthage . . . Our focus is on turning out our voters . . . We are heartened but we're cautious . . . We urge, we urge, we urge . . ."
Every word is taken down as gospel by the assembled reporters. Was that mashed or baked potatoes, Doug?
It is fascinating to contrast the reports trickling out of Texas with the mood and the news leaking out from Gore's Tennessee citadel. George W. Bush, it would seem, is intent on projecting bliss: he serves coffee to reporters. He's joking with Mom and Dad.
And the news out of Camp Gore? The human energiser hasn't put down the phone receiver all day. The county leader in the Minnesota lake country? He's heard from Al. And the radio DJs around the US? They're all hearing from this hoarse-voiced drive-time Al. The sense conveyed is that if you're an undecided voter and you live in a swing state, stay off the phone. The Vice-President has your number.
Even the Big Man, White House Bill, has been let out to work what Hattaway describes as "certain listenership areas".
It's 10:30 p.m. and Florida is back in the undecided column. Hattaway is back, saying the remaining votes are in heavily Democratic areas, that they are confident, very confident. But . . .
David Ragosin, white-haired and a Nashville Gore volunteer, heaves a heavy sigh. "I've got to get outside. It's driving me crazy, the tension."
More news flickers - New Mexico has gone Gore. Ragosin shoots his arm into the air and screams. "Bye, I've got to get out of here."
A reporter runs out across the street to a late-night deli. Down the block, in the humid light of a three-quarter moon, David Tuck er signals, yells out. "This is tension, huh? No rest for the weary. None at all."