Every once in a while the ghost face appears. We're all doing our best to deny it, but we know it's there. Call it what you want—politics as usual, dimpled ballots, motions to deny—but it's not going to go away just because you give it another name.

The ghost face vaporizes all the dross: the weasely rationalizations, the tiresome spinning, the party-line speak, the "George W. won three times." It's that moment when the house of cards collapses, when the emperor's new clothes evaporate and all the persiflage falls away, when the whole business from beginning to end starts to seem like some illusionist's trick.

You always knew that neither of these guys were what they claimed to be, but it's really disheartening when you suddenly realize they're the opposite of what they said they were. Forget about the kinder, gentler Republican party, folks, or states' rights for that matter—what, you fell for that? That was just propaganda, that was something our media advisers cooked up—like "progress is our most important product" or "leave no child behind."

But are you really that surprised? What do we even know about these guys? Has anyone reading this actually seen Dub-yah or Al in person or really know anything about them that hasn't been pre-digested, prefabricated, and prepackaged? And where do we know them from, folks? From TV. Yup, that monstrous machine designed to sell miraculous tile cleaners and over-the-counter sex aids. We were sold a bill of goods with Dub-yah and Al. They're no different from any other product about which the manufacturer will claim just about anything. Voting in this case is little different from, say, choosing a long-distance carrier. You know, "Come back to George Bush." Only this time he's under new management (another old trick).

Both of these stiffs are owned and operated by oil companies and special interests. Both of them are manufactured products, franchises—packaged and plugged just like Dristan and Draino. It's dispiriting to see either of these guys on TV. Almost any other politician—Dick Gephardt or Tom Daschle—looks vaguely humanoid in comparison.

Gore is looking more and more like a replicant—a really great model like the ZK2000, but you need a blade runner to figure out if he's real. His head seems to be incongruous with his body—it's the wrong size, as if there had been an inventory problem when he was being assembled. Bush, once the swaggering frat boy, has turned into the incredible shrinking man. In front of the cameras he looks scared and wooden, mouthing the words of his handlers like a prisoner in a hostage tape.

In this deadly morass Bill Clinton is beginning to look more and more like Ripley, the Sigourney Weaver character in Aliens, with Gore as the android doctor and Bush as the baby reptile (every time he opens his mouth another set of teeth appear—James Baker, Tom DeLay, Trent Lott). Maybe, like Ripley, he can get rid of these mutant pests and we can get on with the sequel, Wild Bill III. A recent Saturday Night Live skit has Clinton still walking around the White House in his robe and slippers two years into a Gore presidency. When he turns to a busy Gore and says, "We're out of beer," you can't help feeling nostalgic for how at ease he was in the White House (I know, I know, too at ease).

There's something quintessentially American about Clinton, even his fall from grace is like a preposterous movie plot in which a national hero is brought down by some (very human) flaw. The election debacle has cast Clinton in a rosy light. Caught between the Manchurian candidate (Gore) and the terrified Dub-yah (pushed in front of a sea of American flags like a modern-day dauphin), we'd have Bill back in a minute—for one more term or until someone resembling an adult human being appears.

The ghost face shows up when there's a hole in our soul, when there's too much of nothing, and everything seems empty and pointless. But the good thing about the re-appearance of the ghost face is that once you admit you've seen it, you'll do anything to make it go away because it empties life of all meaning. Its ultimate message is that everything is a trick, a lie, a mirage. And if this election fiasco has done anything, it has (hopefully) woken us up, let the scales fall from our eyes. Maybe next time we'll take voting a little more seriously, look for candidates with more substance to them, fight for causes worth fighting for, or maybe get rid of the patriarchal electoral college. On the other hand, maybe not.