> Well we don't hide the illusion very well, we annoucne the popular vote same time we annoucne the electorial vote. . . . It is flimsy at best an even a causal investigation will reveal the truth.

This is not true. Availability of facts, unintuitive as it may seem, has absolutely nothing to do with public appearances. Clinton is the perfect example. The impression most people have when you say "In the two Clinton elections..." is that he won solid victories. And he did. The election nights were pretty suspense-free, and his electoral vote count wasn't even close. When making the point that perhaps it was pretty close after all, or perhaps he wasn't all that acclaimed by the people after all, one must explicitly mention the popular vote percentage statistic every time.

If you do any reading about political or industry news -- any country's politics, any industry's business -- you will find that this is true across the board. As an example, the casual follower of the movie industry will respond to the title "Godzilla" with "disappointing box office," while the response to the title "Armageddon" will be "smash hit." In actuality, the difference between Armageddon's worldwide gross and Godzilla's is not much more than the difference in their budgets. (Ironically, Godzilla was a MORE promising moneymaker in its first two weeks of business than Armageddon was in its first two weeks; since hit/flop perceptions are formulated after opening weekends, this is a still stronger indicator of how perception and freely available facts don't always coincide.) So why did it work out this way? Disney was better at spinning the media over Armageddon's high-but-less-than-expectation opening grosses, while Sony flubbed the job for Godzilla.

Say what you will about the relative importance of Presidential elections and box office grosses -- the analogy holds: to some (not me), movie business is more important. To those involved, the direct personal effect is greater. This is a business in which careers and millions of dollars (individually, not collectively, owned) all depend on public image. That image is ironically not threatened by availability of contradictory facts.

I maintain that it is important that America's President be elected with the image of acclaim, as that keeps our country strong in the international scheme of things, which is important for countless reasons. If you have any doubt about that whatsoever, just watch the next four years. Whichever candidate wins Florida -- Bush or Gore, it won't matter -- America will not be considered as powerful or persuasive as it was in either the Clinton years or the Reagan years. Unless the winner of this election manages to pull off some miraculous public image repair work early on. This election is unfortunately one of the very few in which the Electoral College was not able to skew a small victory into a necessarily greater victory.