In the Greek myth Pandora opened a jar with all manners of evil which spread over the world to plague mankind. In another version what the jar contained were blessings. Pandora means the "all-giving". Depending on your political perspective Bush qualifies as a modern Pandora (except for the sex of course). Will Pandora one prevail over Pandora two or will it be the other way around in the coming election assuming that people prefer blessings to evils? 

The evidence is overwhelming that Bush lied not once but many times in the run-up to the Second Iraqi war. He went on lying "after the war" and he even made fun of his own lies, which takes some chutzpah when US soldiers were being killed and maimed in Iraq. In fact, it's worse because what the whole picture of the man and his circumstances reveals is that Bush is a grinning hypocrite, sanctimonious but charming. Hypocrisy is still the homage that vice renders virtue.

The list of his deceptions is as long as Don Juan's in Leporello's catalogue. He accused Iraq of having WMD when he knew that this was false, or at least extremely unlikely. He connected Iraq and terrorism and the downing of the WTC towers, which was a lie. He plunged America into the "wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place", a cliché which he turned against Kerry as an attempt to discredit America's security policies. He knows that the Iraqi situation is hopeless and he keeps talking about the spread of democracy and this and that platitude, all of which he knows to be false. A  glimmer of honesty shone through when he admitted that the so-called war on terror was unwinnable, which gave the lie to all his countless previous pronouncements. But this was said so offhandedly that almost no one took noticed or cared. 

So why is this irresponsible liar and mischief-maker likely to be returned to office in November? Some of the reasons are historical. Others are personal. And a few of these have to do with his contender.    

American electors tend to ratify incumbents particularly in times of conflict. Bush became a hero after 9/11. Any other person in the White House would have reacted as he did--with sorrow and defiance--but it happened it was he who was there then. This alone should just about corral all those who voted for him the first time around, and probably should get him some extra votes. But Bush's mistakes have been so flagrant that the incumbency and war factors could possibly not be working for him smoothly now. 

In the debates, Kerry showed skill and steadfastness while Bush flip-flopped. The president acted at first as if his record was unimpeachable. Then he waved his arms. Then he went back to the friendly, smiling, loose-and-easy style that was the undoing of Gore. Kerry was cool throughout and, though there were still ambiguities in his position on the Second Iraqi war, the points he did harp on discredited further Bush's hollow re-iterations. If the debates were to decide the election, Kerry would probably win hands down. 

Enter now the Kerry reasons. Most of the support he garnered in the debates, he probably lost afterwards from the likelihood--admitting that this is an impressionistic generalization--that Americans identify more easily with Bush than with Kerry. Bush is religious-minded and optimistic, vulnerable but game, clever without being demeaning. If this appreciation fails, then Kerry could win. However, Kerry has other drawbacks. 

After all Kerry's exertions, it remains that his Iraqi policy is still "I can do it better than you can". This is gambling a lot on a hypothesis. Kerry probably had no choice but to follow this strategy, but it is not on the surface a winning one. But there is a historical fact that makes the hypothesis flawed and it is that Kerry at one time was openly opposed to the war his country was waging in Vietnam. He was a decorated Vietnam veteran and he was exercising his right to free speech. But to many Americans he was still being unpatriotic. Jane Fonda's career never fully recovered after her well-meaning betrayal of America in Hanoi. Today as then for a great many voters the norm still is "your country right or wrong".  

Then there are personal undertones which the media generally do not play up but which do surface with enough frequency to make some difference. Bush has a claim on being a self-made millionaire. Kerry, as he himself had to admit, "married up". He is a super-millionaire because of marriage and this is counter-cultural in America.  

Finally, there is the delicate subject of religion. Bush is a fundamentalist in the American sense of believing that God is actually looking over him as an individual. Kerry insists on his Catholic upbringing and his deep Catholic convictions. But every one knows that Kerry's forbears were Jewish and if elected he would in effect be America's first Jewish president. It is not Kerry's own view but it is Jews themselves who make a great deal of Jewishness as a genetic phenomenon. American elections are still on the whole decided by white middle-class Protestant voters. America is not anti-Semitic. But the decisive vote in the forthcoming election could be of those Americans who are not keen on a crypto-Jew sneaking into the White House. 

For all these reasons, even though Kerry should be the winner in the showdown, it is much more likely that it is Bush that will be ratified.