More than a week after conceding the presidential election to George W. Bush, Senator John Kerry retracted his concession, calling for a “full and immediate” recount of the Ohio vote and throwing a divided nation into turmoil.

“I wouldn't be polishing my cowboy boots and practicing the Texas Two-Step for the inauguration just yet if I were a Republican,” Kerry campaign adviser Mike McCurry told CNN. “We think we can still win this.”

Indicators point to the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeting more than 1,000 points on the surprise news when the markets open.

A visibly angry President Bush decried Kerry's change of position in a rare appearance before the White House press pool. “I'm sick and tired of my Democratic opponents taking back their concessions,” Bush said, alluding to Vice President Al Gore's retraction of his first concession of defeat in the 2000 election. “Don't they know I called, `no backsies'?” he added, ending with the nervous laughter he displayed during this year's presidential debates.

“My position on vote-counting has been perfectly consistent,” he said. “I said that Ohio's provisional ballots had to be counted before I said they didn't have to be. And that's always been my position.”

Sources close to the Kerry campaign say that running mate John Edwards, who is retiring from the Senate this year and is expected to return to his personal-injury law practice, pressed the Democratic nominee to reconsider his concession after Bush announced he was determined to achieve tort reform in his second term.

The famously anti-lawyer president threatened to launch “all-out lit'gation” to quash any recount effort. “My daddy's friend, Jim Baker, has put together an impressive army of attorneys - a strong coalition of the willing, you might say - to make sure that the will of the American people is carried out,” Bush declared.

Indeed, the White House political machine wasted no time mobilizing. “This is just further proof that the Democrats are completely out of touch with the good, hard-working, God-fearing, heterosexual people in the American mainstream, not to mention being borderline insane,” said an administration spokesman. “Why are the Democrats so upset that they would dispute our landslide 51 percent victory? Don't they know that President Bush is a uniter not a divider - unlike themselves? Didn't they hear the president say after the election that he was going to reach out to all who share his goals?”

And in a move that some observers say bore the fingerprints of Republican political strategist Karl Rove, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth promptly issued yet another statement attacking Kerry's service in the Vietnam War.

By contrast, leaders of the Democratic party were asked for reaction to Kerry's about-face but were too busy infighting to respond.

A reporter at the White House press “opportunity” asked the president about negative news coming out of Iraq, but Bush cut her off. “No more questions,” he said to the assembled journalists, grinning with what appeared to be great satisfaction. “Now that I've got the will of the people at my back, I'm going to enforce the one-question-a-year rule for you all in the media. But I will say this: Freedom and democracy are on the march.”