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 office.
In other words, he eagerly seized on the hope that it might be
the Morons for Gore who would finally put him over the top.

Not that Gore was ever very persuasive in the first place as the
champion of intellect. The dirty secret of American electoral
politics, and the one that no one in the media dare disclose, is
that it is now, post-Clinton, post-Dick Morris, entirely
constructed on the assumption that the voters are morons. Always,
of course, the art of political success in a democracy has been
based