By the time you read this, Canada will have a new Prime Minister – a man with a different set of insecurities from the outgoing Jean Chrétien. Martin’s tend to revolve around his choice of university major ‘way back in the 1950s: he was in the same year and at the same university as my uncle, Peter Ryan, but took a different path: the young Mr. Ryan took a student-boot-camp kind of courseload called “Math, Physics and Chemistry,” or M, P & C, while the young Mr. Martin took philosophy as his major.

Yes, in the great 1950s, Canada’s new Prime Minister took philosophy as a university lad. Let’s hope that his insecurities result from a dark university past similar to that of my mother’s.

You might be wondering if there are any similarities between the new Prime Minister Martin and George W. Bush, even as they’re being shoveled out from Ottawa. There is one we can count on: both Paul Martin and George W. Bush are going to claim as much credit as they can for the current economic recovery.

Undoubtedly, as far as the 2004 election is concerned, there is already a fair bit of nail- biting in Washington despite the two achievements of the present Administration: the successful prosecution of the war against Al-Qai’da and the current economic recovery. It’s been two years since the United States’ GDP has turned from shrinkage level to growth, and the current rate is well above average.

So why would Republicans worry? President Bush would seem to be a shoo-in, and the Democrats rallying around the “candidate of principle,” Howard Dean, suggests strongly that they’re looking for an honorable defeat next year by going down the reverse-Goldwater track and hoping that a sort of suicide candidate will rally their own for a more successful outcome in ’08.

Maybe the worry stems from the way President Bush got in in the first place. By the standard measures, Gore should have won: all through Clinton’s two terms, there was neither a recession nor a slowdown, and the Democrats had an issue – Columbine – which seemed tailor-made for their kind of sidewalk superintendancy. No- one at the time knew that the World Trade Center was going to be destroyed; few people knew who Osama bin Laden was, let alone al-Qai’da. By the standard formulae that the average spin-doc is helpless without, Gore “should” have won handily.

The above comprises most of the fuel behind the “stolen-election” charge. Sad to say, many Democrats lack the scientific spirit when it comes to data that is violative of their models. (If you don’t mind an aside, a good hard flunk might cure today’s young ‘uns of the habit of covering up data that violate their, and their professors’, spoken or written expectations. A test of this sort is easy to set up.)

Spin doctors are spin doctors, regardless of the party they affiliate with. The same insecurity that is the source of the “we-wuz- robbed” reaction among those who affiliate with the Democratic Party is expressed by a sweaty fear among the Republican sort that President Bush was simply “lucky” in ’00 and that his “luck” might run out next year.

A more sensible explanation is that the Democrats’ tricks were seen through back in 2000 and Al Gore lost as Al Gore. He and his wife have picked up political baggage that has not gone away – mostly relating to self-righteousness – and his underlying authoritarianism might have cost him the Presidency. Bush doesn’t have that streak in him.

So Gore’s personality and underlying leadership style cost him. Now that Al has been put out to pasture in the professor circuit, the normal rules should reassert themselves.

When seen this way, the belief that the personal problems of Rush Limbaugh, including any possible future brushes with a criminal court, are really irrelevant to the outcome of the next election. In the hands of Dean the “principled,” it will just serve as another reason why the Democrats are “morally superior” to the Republicans. That’s all the effect it will have: Bush’s re-election chances will not be seriously affected by revelations of Mr. Limbaugh’s real life and career path.

I suspect that the underlying insecurity among the average sort of political junkie with respect to the above’s relevance is fueled by the same insecurity that consumes the Republican spin doctors. The United States is not as image-ridden as the average political junkie assumes: I’m sure that many a voter will remember the accomplishments of Bush – just as they remembered the underlying character of Al Gore, Junior.