For connoisseurs of historical irony, the election—still undecided as I write—has provided one of the best things to come along since Bill Clinton’s signing into law the statute under the provisions of which (involving an accused sexual harasser’s past behavior) he was himself investigated to within an inch of his political life by Kenneth Starr. For months Al Gore had run a campaign which subtly and not-so-subtly suggested that George W. Bush was at best not up to the job of president and at worst a fool (the press was particularly helpful in establishing this idea in the popular mind). Then, when it appeared that he had lost Florida and therefore the election by a heartbreakingly small margin, Gore suddenly discovered the cause of the 19,000 “disenfranchised” voters in Palm Beach County who had spoiled their ballot papers by being too stupid to know that you couldn’t vote for more than one candidate for the same offi ...

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