Through an analysis of the rhetorical strategies used by mainstream U.S. media between November 8, 2000, and March 3, 2001, the authors show how the U.S. mainstream media helped to restabilize the United States as the pillar of democracy and how an analysis of media accounts can expose the "changing nature of the order of things." The authors demonstrate how the image of the United States as the pillar of democracy was protected through an analysis of (a) images of the Third World that provided a vocabulary for describing America's domestic crisis, (b) media descriptions of our own political foibles and descriptions of similar happenings in other countries, and (c) the downplaying of other countries' media accounts of the U.S. 2000 election crisis.