GROVER CLEVELAND FOR PRESIDENT

MAYBE WHAT THIS COUNTRY NEEDS IS A BIG, FAT, BORING, HONEST MAN

He is out there somewhere: America's savior, the next great president of the United States. He will not look presidential. He might be fat, or have bad teeth. He will mumble a little, or stammer, or speak in sound bites that run on a beat too long. He might be a woman; if so, he will seem dowdy. People who underestimate him will think him stupid; no one will overestimate him. He will have gumption. He will lack guile. He will not particularly want to be president. He will be strong-willed but humble. At night, alone with his terror, he will doubt that he is equal to the job.

And for that reason, he will be perfect.

We are in a spiritual abyss. The president of the United States has acted deplorably, has made truth an elastic commodity, and yet is riding a crest of popularity Eisenhower would have envied. People, presumably, expect no better from their elected leaders. It is on such cynicism that empires crumble.

We have seen this before. It happened in the generation following the Civil War, after a bleeding nation rewarded its greatest leader with a bullet in the brain, and then elected a succession of men who presided over an era of unparalleled scoundreldom and cronyism. A rapidly industrializing country had no shortage of money, or of plutocrats willing to invest it in graft, or of bureaucrats willing to oblige them. Hori zons were limitless, as were opportunities for plunder. Public lands were pillaged by robber barons; political favors were routinely bought and sold; elections were stolen; the citizenry expected no better.

Fitfully, the economy was growing. But we had mortgaged our honor.

And then there arrived in Washington a huge, bejowled man, a walrus in wingtips. Hear him coming? That's the groan of his step on the stair. That's the thud of his head on the doorjamb. Confound it. He is not a graceful man. That's him switching off the lights. Mustn't waste electricity.

Recognize him? Probably not. He was just one of the scowling fogies with whiskers, back when presidents looked like grandpas. What people know about him is mostly that he served two uneventful terms, four years apart, forever screwing up how we count the presidents. GroverCleveland was a mule -- obstinate, uncompromising, methodical, unimaginative, hidebound, harumphing, heroically incorruptible. He didn't do much. Except, perhaps, save our soul.

Like fellow Democrat Bill Clinton, Cleveland had his skeletons. Like Clinton, he had evaded the military draft. Like Clinton, he was involved in a tawdry sex scandal. Like Clinton, he enjoyed pleasures of the flesh in the White House with a sultry 22-year-old brunette.

But there is a profound difference between the two men. The 22-year-old woman was Cleveland's wife, Frances, his law partner's daughter, for whose love he chastely waited 10 years. He avoided service in the Civil War by paying a man to take his place; it was somewhat unseemly but perfectly legal, even commonplace. Cleveland never denied it or sought to give it spin.

And last, there was the matter of sexual misconduct.

During his first campaign, it was alleged that Cleveland had fathered an illegitimate child a decade earlier, while a lawyer in Buffalo. The mother was said to have been a woman of easy virtue and intemperate thirst. After the birth, she was banished to an insane asylum. Supposedly, at Cleveland's behest, the child was wrested from her and placed in an orphanage.

In its day this was about as incendiary as a scandal could get.