Yet those moralists have suddenly become unaccountably mellow, as if they had (no doubt inadvertently) smoked a beakerful of the herbal equivalent of the true, the blushful Hippocrene. Whoa, dude, whatever, they mumble, barely raising their heads from the paisley pillow upon which they recline while listening to Blue Cheer. Drunk driving? Hey, man, we all blow it. Reefer? Cocaine? Chill, dude -- what are you, some kinda square?

This isn't metaphor. A weird watershed of some kind was crossed on Thursday night's "Hardball" when Alan Simpson, the fire-breathing former Wyoming senator, defended Bush by saying that look, every family has been through this, we all have kids who have been busted for drunken driving, everybody knows a kid who got popped for pot or cocaine. And if there was a way that Republicans could push reformed drug laws that would help only their rich, white children beat the rap, I know they'd be big enough to put them through!

Then there was William Bennett. The apostle of windy rectitude was completely untroubled by Bush's arrest, telling host Christopher Matthews that it would only be an issue if he lied about it. (I don't know what Bennett is saying now that it appears that Bush did lie, but I don't think he'll be rushing to his computer to start writing "The Death of Outrage II." There are Republican lies and Democratic lies, and in the exalted nostrils of St. William, only the latter stink.) Somehow, it's hard to imagine Trent Lott or Rush Limbaugh or any of the harrumphers of the right taking this live-and-let-live line if it was Clinton or Al Gore who had been arrested for drunken driving. Then, the very fate of the republic would be at stake.

The rest of the moralizers fell into party lockstep. Limbaugh began attacking Gore and his supposed tricksters, working himself up into such a frenzy that by the time he was done you were pretty sure that it was Al himself who had poured a beer bong down poor George's craw that sodden day 24 years ago. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., took the same line. For gentlemen who had revealed themselves to be such tireless seekers after the truth in Monicagate, they seemed oddly unconcerned with the fact that the story, whatever its origins, was true.

One can forgive political operatives anything: They don't pretend to be engaged in anything other than getting their candidate elected, by any means necessary. But those who mount the bully pulpit and claim to be speaking in the name of morality must be held to a higher standard. And by failing to hold the Republican candidate to the same principles they held Clinton to, they have abdicated all right to be regarded as arbiters of public behavior. In fact, they have been revealed as nothing more than party hacks, practicing the most vulgar kind of instrumental, ends-justify-the-means morality, prepared to use the Bible or any other tool to defeat their opponent. It is impossible to take them seriously. And the next time they come forward raising a holy ruckus over some Democrat's misdeed, they should be laughed off the national stage.

You do have to feel some sympathy for the moralistic wing of the GOP, though. It's been hard from the beginning of the Bush campaign to look at them, then look at their candidate, and keep a straight face. Now it's impossible not to burst out giggling.

Here's their champion, the man they anointed to uphold their cherished virtues: An intellectually lazy frat boy who avoided the Vietnam War by pulling a dubious National Guard stint, a self-confessed partier and problem drinker who didn't reveal an arrest for drunken driving and who has conspicuously ducked all questions about what other substances he might have used in his past, the heir to a political dynasty who was handed a series of cushy rich-kid jobs.

Yessiree, that's certainly moral exemplar material! This is the guy they're trying to sell to us as a paragon of virtue, the Western hero who will bring honor and decency and courage and mom and apple pie and all that star-spangled Ronald Reagan stuff back to the White House, once they fumigate it.

Sorry, that dog won't hunt.

If American voters wind up putting this amiable dunce in the White House, I'm actually hoping he falls off the wagon and returns to his party-boy ways, because then at least we might have some decadent, Merry Monarch-like Restoration Comedy fun -- leering courtiers, foppish wits, extreme décolleté and so on. But please, my dear braying moralists, don't pretend this low-rent Charles II imposter represents some kind of Great Awakening. As Al Pacino said in "The Godfather," "It insults my intelligence -- and makes me very angry."

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