According to a 12 December 2000 article by David Barstow and Adam Nagourney in The New York Times:

"... Gore's failure to ask the Florida courts for a manual statewide recount ... unnecessarily raised constitutional obstacles that made it far more difficult for Florida's courts to fashion a timely remedy that the Supreme Court might have found tolerable. That error ... had been compounded by an earlier misstep by ... Gore's lawyers - a decision to seek more time to complete the first phase of the counting process. The decision, one on which even ... Gore's lawyers disagreed, greatly shortened the time available in the second phase to seek a statewide manual recount.
"He has nobody to blame but himself," said Thomas W. Merrill, a professor of law at Northwestern University, who criticized the Gore campaign for elevating hardball tactics - seeking immediate hand recounts in Democratic strongholds - over a strategy of demanding that all votes be counted regardless of the political consequences. ...

... Gore's principal lawyer, David Boies, erred in failing to respond to a clear invitation from several [US Supreme Court] justices to define more precisely how counters should evaluate voter intent in examining ballots. At least seven of the justices, according to tonight's main opinion, were clearly not satisfied by ... Boies's attempt to argue that it is was enough, simply, to determine the voters' intent.

... Gore ...[did not]... formally petition the Florida courts for a manual statewide recount. Instead, ... Gore had only made the offer ... for a manual statewide recount ... to ... Bush in a televised address nearly a month ago. ... Bush rejected the offer, and

... Gore's lawyers did not pursue ... a manual statewide recount ... in court, even though they were invited to do just that during oral arguments before the Florida Supreme Court. ... Boies told the Florida justices that the vice president would "accept" a statewide recount, but added, "We are not urging that upon the court." ...

... Gore lawyers said they never dreamed, given the shortness of time, that the Florida Supreme Court would order a statewide manual recount of some 45,000 ballots.

... Ben Ginsberg, a senior lawyer for the Bush team, said that ... Gore's lawyers pursued an intellectually dishonest course to further one overriding goal: finding enough Democratic votes to overcome ... Bush's lead. ... The Gore team sought recounts in four of Florida's 67 counties - Broward, Palm Beach, Volusia and Miami-Dade - all of which ... had voted for ... Gore. ... "Going statewide, they're really not sure they can win," ... Ginsberg said. "Their overall mistake," he added, "is being so hypocritical about what they were asking for. ... They haven't been able to sustain as a legal matter what they were talking about at press conferences. That hurt them in court." ...".

AND...

"In public, Al Gore argued that all the counties in Florida should be recounted. In public, Al Gore asked George Bush to agree to a statewide recount. In public, Al Gore was a true champion of all the votes.

But in court papers and in the court, Al Gore's lawyers always argued for a four county recount and argued against a statewide recount.

It is often claimed that one candidate alone could not get a statewide recount. This is false. Yes, under the Protest Phase, it is difficult, one must convince all 67 counties to do a recount. But under the Contest Phase, a statewide recount can be requested with one lawsuit. If the circuit court agrees to, they can order a statewide recount (see Section 102.168 of Florida Law, as it was in November 2000). The contest phase would have started on November 18, but the Florida Supreme Court delayed the start until November 26.

But the court papers that Gore's lawyers submitted before the courts:

Judge Terry Lewis on November 13, 2000
Florida Supreme Court on November 20, 2000
Judge Sauls on November 27, 2000
Florida Supreme Court on December 7, 2000

only requested a recount of the four counties that he had won by 380,000 votes.

Before each of the courts above, Al Gore's lawyers argued against including the other 63 counties that Bush had won by 380,000 votes. In the publicly televised court hearing on November 20 they did tell that court that if the court wanted to recount all of Florida, that would be okay. But they made it very clear, that they preferred the four county recount over the statewide recount.

Not until December 11, 2000, after it was totally impossible for them to get a four county recount, did his lawyers, in papers submitted and in arguments before the United States Supreme Court, argue for a statewide recount."