Every now and then there is a moment when our politics are exposed utterly. It happened a year ago, when the current president suddenly realize that no one would believe another word he said. It is happening right now in the Republican race to replace Clinton.

For over a year an elaborate hoax has been perpetrated on the voters of the United States. This hoax pretended that there was no abler candidate for president than Governor George W. Bush of Texas.

From the get-go, the establishment piled on with this guy. It was a wonderful hoax because everyone was in on it. Governors, senators, congresspersons and everyone else signed on. The money was heaped so high that other qualified people shied away from the race, or were driven out before a single vote was cast.

In their minds, here was the next Clinton. He was attractive, well-spoken, well-connected, had impeccable political bloodlines, was sort of conservative but sort of not, and he came from outside the Washington beltway.

So what happened? Someone with an actual personality, someone with something to say and the energy to lay it out, stepped in and stole the lunch right off George Bush's plate.

Bush's candidacy race was founded on the hoax of destiny. Somehow, he just was the best candidate, without saying much or doing much. No one was allowed to question this. His party steamrollered itself to achieve early unanimity. "We will construct the mightiest candidate money can buy." Bush was deliberately kept him away from people, away from the press, away from prying questions, in order to maintain the cloak of inevitability.

And now it has all come crashing down on him. This front-runner, and the arrogant people who tried to put him over on the electorate, are one of the biggest laughingstocks in the history of American politics, still pretending to be untouched and unstoppable when the truth is that he has been stopped cold, and has no resources - money and endorsements being useless against the truth, that he is a tool, and not a very bright one -- to get started again.

What is unique here is that the Big Lie doesn't work here any more. With instant networked communication, you can't hide the fact that you are hiding. You can't hide the fact that you are losing. And though you dance a pretty pirouette, like Bush's obvious swing to the right this week, or his peculiar claim to being the nonestablishment candidate, no one is fooled any more.

You can't say one message in Iowa and New Hampshire ("I am the annointed one") and a completely different one at Bob Jones University ("Those Yankees up there just don't understand!") In America, people eventually get hip. We are so disillusioned with the choices handed down to us that we will board any train, punch any ticket, elect any wrestler for the chance to say fungoo to the major parties who have insulted our intelligence so many times.

This disgrace is not George Bush's, though he will be left holding a limp and smelly bag. The disgrace is his party's elders'. They hand-selected him. They saw in him qualities of leadership - or malleability? - that voters can't make out through the fog. Their political judgment told them that this was their go-to guy, and then they did everything possible to stack the deck in his favor. They failed catastrophically.

Voters have figured it out; the media have just about figured it out. It is the pre-dawn. We are waiting, waiting for South Carolina, waiting for the precise moment when George W. Bush and his party figure it out, too.