[In New Hampshire], Bush [Sr.] licked Sen. Bob Dole with a last-minute TV spot falsely claiming Dole would tax home heating oil, triggering Dole's blistering riposte to Bush: "Stop lying about my record." Never mind Iran-Contra, out-of-the-loopmanship, Iraqgate, S&L coverups; let's stick to pure domestic politics. The name Willie Horton ring a bell?

Whose campaign took up the Lyndon LaRouchites' deranged claim that Michael Dukakis had undergone psychiatric shock treatment and amplified it? Ronald Reagan slipped that one to the Duke, slyly winking that he wasn't going to "pick on an invalid," haw haw. Where was George? Smirking, stage right.

Who benefitted from the craven rumor sparked by Republican Sen. Steve Symms of Idaho that Kitty Dukakis had burned an American flag? What Symms did in '88 for Bush is echoed by the '92 role of another fang-and-claw Republican right-winger, Rep. Bob Dornan of California, chief sorcerer - I can't say source - behind the Clinton-as-KGB-dupe story Bush invited Dornan to the White House to conjure.

Bush has long had a fondness for chainsaw-artists whose specialty is ripping the flesh off the opposition. Remember the late Lee Atwater's deathbed conversion to Catholicism and his public apology for the dirty-trickstering he'd performed to elect Bush? Maybe Perot remembered. How about Mary Matalin, Atwater's successor, sprinkling attack faxes involving Clinton's wife and possible significant others?