To the politically savvy, who have the time, information and education to decipher the Clintonic mood, it provides clues to what the president actually thinks.

Don't confuse the Clintonic mood with a simple lie or a broken promise. When George Bush pledged, "no new taxes," and then agreed to a tax hike, he either lied in advance or went back on his word. But when President Clinton promised in his State of the Union message that he would control health care spending, expand availability of care and maintain the current quality of care, he set up goals that are inherently impossible to meet.

The Clintonic mood poses a grave danger to the democratic process. Voters consider what each candidate intends to do, and whether that candidate can be trusted to carry out his or her plans. They then vote for the candidate whose goals best converge with their own. If the use of the Clintonic mood becomes widespread, this will no longer be possible--carrying out some campaign promises will a priori entail breaking others.

With words fast losing their meaning, it will be difficult for the average voter to figure out a candidate's true plans. The electorate will suffer from a fundamental linguistic bifurcation.

Those who have the information, experience and education to decipher the Clintonic mood--the information aristocracy, so to speak--will be able to hold politicians accountable and make informed voting choices. Everyone else will be hopelessly lost.

Anyone who thinks that habitual use of the Clintonic mood poses only distant and highly abstract dangers is sorely mistaken. Al Gore '69 is, of course, a robot, and as such relies on traditional logic circuits.

If he is exposed excessively to the Clintonic mood, these circuits will not be able to resolve the paradoxes with which they are confronted. Our estimable Vice President's central processor will melt down and his head will explode. And to risk such a national tragedy for the dishonest political gains that the Clintonic mood afford just wouldn't be prudent.

We've gone from syntactic to semantic bankruptcy.