Yet Americans care relatively little about which candidate wins and a great deal about what kind of person he is and what sorts of policies he will pursue. In that sense, political campaigns are about ideas. During campaigns, candidates condense a particular point of view about the world and try to build a majority around it. Not Machiavelli, but the great ethical and moral philosophers of the West, from Plato to John Stuart Mill, posed timeless questions of truth, justice, and right and wrong that all political candidates, however hesitatingly, have to try to answer.

The presidential campaign of 2000 managed to keep philosophy fairly well hidden. Afraid that any traits of character could later be used as evidence of bad character, both Al Gore and George W. Bush refused to offer even a glimpse of themselves as flesh-and-blood human beings, obfuscating any hints of how their personal attributes might translate into conceptions of the right way to act. Seeking to rally their base while attracting as many of the undecided voters as possible, both chose reiteration over reflection, avoiding statements of principle and purpose at any cost.

This was a campaign so scripted that no debate, press conference or gaffe could deter the candidates from remaining, as they liked to say, on message.

How extraordinary, then, that the most predictable presidential campaign in American history was followed by the most unpredictable finish of our times. Facing a tie vote that no one anticipated, Democratic and Republican operatives found themselves having to react quickly and spontaneously to real-world events, and to do so without the benefit of focus groups and tracking polls. And what we saw as a result, beyond the endless discussions of tactics and endgames, were hints about the underlying philosophies of each camp.

Take, for example, the question of truth. For more than 2,000 years, Western philosophy has been premised on the notion that it is possible to make accurate claims about what is true. At one level, of course, politics has little to do with the pursuit of truth as philosophers understand it: candidates for office are not expected to say what they really believe and, once in office, they would be remiss if they did not disguise their intentions and confuse their enemies. During the campaign, both George W. Bush and Al Gore proved themselves adept at that kind of politics; understanding full well that voters might not like the actual details of their tax cuts or plans for Social Security and prescription drug benefits, they adopted the rosiest economic assumptions or simply ignored discrepancies. Had the campaign ended with a clear victory for either man, he would have taken office as just one more politician who was less than forthright in his campaign.

In the campaign's aftermath, Gore, relentless in his quest to challenge the Florida secretary of state's certification of the election, necessarily upheld the proposition that the truth of who had won could be established. Bush, by contrast, revealed something deeper than the typical politician's willingness to manipulate the truth for his own purposes. In his determined effort to prevent anyone from ever knowing who actually won the state, he implicitly endorsed the notion that there was no truth even worth manipulating. When promulgated by left-wing academics skeptical of truth claims held to be timeless and universal -- such claims, they argued, denied the proclivity of dominant groups to impose their values on the oppressed or the marginalized -- postmodern skepticism has faced derisive rebuttal from political conservatives. But when it was expressed by George W. Bush and his supporters in their efforts to explain why it was unnecessary to count votes, conservatives applauded. Bush will be our first truly postmodern president, the first of whom it can be said that when asked how he came to be the winner, he can respond that it all depends on the perspective one brings to the question.

We know, because President Clinton reminded us, that politicians who lie too flagrantly are hobbled in their exercise of authority, for if they are willing to lie under oath or in front of a camera, why should we ever believe them again? Yet the very fact Bill Clinton was caught in a lie underscored truth's priority. Only when we agreed that something happened in that case -- that Clinton had an affair with an intern -- could we punish Clinton. As a postmodern president, Bush will face a challenge to his authority far greater than Clinton's, for the foundation of his legitimacy will hinge on the proposition that ultimately it did not matter whether his victory was real or not.

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