How Gore and Clinton have handed over to Bush

I'll miss Bill Clinton. The more I see of the candidates for his job, the more I know I'm going to miss him. The more I see of George W. Bush, the more I remember the despairing analysis of an Irish-American friend at the height of the Lewinsky furore. "The truly unforgivable thing that Clinton has done," she said, "is that he has handed the next election to George Bush."

And so it may come to pass. A man who has left his native country all of three times in his 53 years, cannot pronounce Slobodan Milosevic, thinks the National Rifle Association is just tickety-boo and is in thrall to the global corporations, those most sinister of superpowers, may by tomorrow night be the most powerful man in the world, responsible for shaping foreign policy, choosing members of the Supreme Court, articulating a vision, setting a tone for the mighty US nation.

And from whom will he have wrested this prize? From Al Gore, of course, who thinks nothing of engaging his wife in the most cringingly sustained lip-lock in electoral history merely to push his maritally correct credentials into the faces of the undecideds. Yet, with his lofty, Lewinsky-linked refusal to share a stage with Bill Clinton, he has all but handed the election to Bush.

Meanwhile, the real Lewinsky victim, Hillary Clinton, is bounding across New York in her quest for a senate seat, sharing a rollicking double bill with the self-same Bill who says it's her turn now. It's an upside-down world indeed when your vice-president takes your marital infidelity more personally than your wife does, as a Time magazine writer put it last week.

As for the other women "victimised" by Clinton, Paula Jones, the woman who accused him of sexual harassment and got a new nose and wardrobe for her trouble, has kept the good times rolling by posing nude for Penthouse. "I thought it was the best thing to do for me and my children. Of course money had something to do with it." Ms Lewinsky sails on, parlaying her sleazy celebrity into an autobiography, handbag design and talk shows, cheered on by the very people who like to view Clinton as a moral leper.

They must find it rather galling then to see this pariah step down with the highest job rating approval of any retiring president in US history; to see the blurred vision induced by the speed of current events sharpen into the more benign, considered view of the historians; to be forced - behind closed doors of course - to compare his genius for language and communication, his astounding ability to build convincing rhetorical bridges across the dark, ungovernable chasms of contemporary American history, in the words of one writer, with the garbled, inane efforts of George W.; to acknowledge that Bill Clinton's honest attempt to be a president for all the people has resulted in a better standard of living for many of the least advantaged.

The point of all this is that politicians are not all the same, that it does matter who gets the job. Whether US president or county councillor at the back end of west Roscommon, politicians can and do make a difference.

Yet, in any discussion on the topic, the electorate's increasing disenchantment with politics is now taken for granted, accepted without question and, worse, fuelled by those who should know better, those who know that democracy depends on citizens having that sense of ownership essential to get them off the couch and down to the polling booth come election day.

WHAT becomes of the disenchanted? Once people ingest the lessons of despair, to what do they turn? Disenchantment should lead to more considered thinking. Often, it means precisely the opposite. It means that lazy thinkers can re cite that old mantra - "can't-be-bothered-to-vote-sure-they're-all-the-same" - and get away with it because now they sound just like a lot of the noisier, more monosyllabic commentators.

There's no shame any more in such patently brainless, unproductive behaviour. Far from it; the very ones who can't be bothered to vote or haven't the single brain cell required to make a decision between two candidates have become the most sought-after segment of the entire poll. In a close-fought election like this presidential campaign, they may well swing the result. So the candidates dumb down even further, scurrying from one late-night television show to the next, looking for new ways to catch and hold ever-contracting attention spans.

According to one survey, 47 per cent of 18to 29-year-old Americans often gleaned information from programmes like these, as well as a quarter of all adults. What sort of information do they glean? Well, according to former Texas governor Anne Richards, the main thing they look for is a sense of humour. So a good joke is your only man. It can be incredibly effective in getting your message out, she told the Guardian, "because people repeat it". That apparently is how you establish your "brand" with the kind of swing voters we're talking about.

So there, folks, is where we leave many of the "disenchanteds" and "undecideds" - havin' a Bud, watchin' the game, latchin' on to the dude with the darndest joke. Issues? You mean like gun control, NATO, the UN, the vision thing? Who needs 'em? The heretical thought occurs that maybe, just maybe it might be best if some people actually stayed on the couch.

The show gurus themselves are not unaware of this. "It's ironic, because the undecided voter has become the most empowered voting block and these are people who are absolutely incapable of making a decision," said the co-creator of the Daily Show, Madeleine Smithberg. "We've somehow given this most important decision over to the idiots who can't make a decision. We've empowered the fools."

The message is universal. Listen up, politicians, commentators and anyone who gives a damn about democracy. Time to take stock.

Missing you already, Bill.