That marriages and morality should at some point become a factor in the Bore versus Gush campaign was inevitable.

They say back home in Little Rock that since neither candidate appears to have any distinguishing characteristic, where they stand on the issue of extramarital sex in the Oval Office has begun to preoccupy the media. Even The New York Times is thinging that old thong, if a recent op-ed column by Maureen Dowd is anything to go by. Oh well, anything to brighten up a boring election year after eight hectic years with Bill Clinton.

There is something about an engaging scoundrel that appeals to the urchin in all of us. This rich seam of sentiment has been mined for years by generations of Bollywood film producers. Just close your eyes and think of Shammi Kapoor as the roadside Romeo, Jumping Jack Jeetu, Raj Kapoor as Cheeky Charlie, Dharmendra and Amitabh in so many roles as incipient cirrhosis patients... the list goes on and on.

So it isn't surprising that when Mr Clinton visited India some months ago, New Delhi rolled out the red carpet. Never mind his shenanigans in the Oval Office, so heroically and minutely documented by Kenneth Starr. 'Cigar wigar chodo yaar, yeh hai apna superstar! Chalo tumko maaf kar diya, badmaash kahin ka!' And so our babus and netas, e-commerce entrepreneurs and IT visionaries, newspaper editors and society hostesses fell over each other to join his retinue. Air Force One had landed.

The fact is that Chelsea wanted to see the Taj Mahal and had been bugging daddy to take her there for years and years.

Now daddy owed her a big treat, given all the unfortunate publicity that she'd had to put up with. Every time the indefatigable Mr Starr dredged up a new revelation from the mud, a wolf pack of shrinks and reporters would descend on bechari Chelsea to find out what was going on in her head.

Meanwhile, both mummy and Al Gore desperately wanted to distance themselves from Willie. Sitting in Washington or New York, you couldn't distance yourself any further than by sending him off halfway round the world, unless, of course, you launched him on a one-way NASA mission to Mars.

You can hardly spend gadzillion dollars on a visit to the Taj Mahal in an election year without hurting the Democrats. So Bill had to proclaim that the Indian subcontinent was "the most dangerous place on earth".

Nonsense. Just boil and filter the water before you drink. And stay clear of the chatpatey stuff, whether served on a plate or wearing skimpy cholis.

Of course, no one could either predict or be answerable for the consequences once he went to Agra and saw all those domes and minarets, especially by moonlight. Mummy knew her Willie only too well: put him near one of those drop-dead gorgeous Indian girls who have won the Miss Universe title and... boiing, unko kuch ho jaata hai.

So she prudently sent her mummy along saying inkey upar kadhi nazar rakhna. Fortunately, the visit was uneventful.

Mr Clinton's bravura performance at the Democratic convention has been a mixed blessing for Mr Gore, who appears to take the evangelical as opposed to the missionary position on sex in the Oval Office.

Mr Gore has let it be known that when he was not busy Inventing The Internet, he and his wife provided the inspiration for Erich Segal's Love Story. His problem now is how to distance himself from Mr Clinton personally while taking part of the credit for eight years of prosperity. His masterly campaign strategy has been to kiss his wife passionately in public at every opportunity.

If you look at it from an Indian perspective, which is the lesser evil -- to be a serial skirt-chaser like Mr Clinton or to be caught, as one of India's honourable mantrijis was some years ago, with a house full of pillowcases stuffed with currency notes? Unabashed, he explained that the money wasn't his, but belonged to 'the party'.

In any law-abiding country, the party would have been over long ago and they would have locked him up and thrown away the key.

Then we have femme fatale Rajni Nimbupani, who was initially cast to run around trees with the late lamented Balraj Balram panting in chase: as Oscar Wilde said memorably in another context, 'the unspeakable in hot pursuit of the uneatable'. She eventually gave the entire country the run-around in her role as a pouting politician.

They should have locked her up and thrown away that key too. Instead, she became the key to the fate of a government.

In this, the age of the CNN sound bite, does anybody still remember Bofors?

It was not very long ago that Bofors hit the headlines in India. The government promptly denied all wrongdoing and produced all manner of learned reports to prove that the gun was selected because of its technical superiority.

One phrase that still remains fresh in my memory is about the Bofors gun having a superior 'shoot-and-scoot' capability. It's more appropriate to say political parties in India since the mid-sixties have had a 'loot-and-scoot' capability, probably unequalled elsewhere in the world.

Of course, democracy in India is an expensive business. You first pay a huge amount for a party ticket, then for local goons, for posters, for garlands, for loudspeakers, for Avis rent-a-crowds, for votes, for cars and jeeps...

By the time you get elected you have spent a fortune and naturally, have to make a reasonable return on your investment over the next five years. Who knows, in these uncertain times, whether any government will last that long?

What follows, therefore, is the systematic rape of a country, which is far worse than a sexual affair, however sordid, with a willing White House intern.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the border, they had yet another General election last year -- yaane ki, yet another General simply elected himself into office.

Key figures in Mr Nawaz Sharief's government were arrested and have by now probably had their constitutions amended beyond all recognition. All things considered, we should perhaps be grateful for the friendly advice Willie gave the General during his brief stopover in Islamabad, to follow his example and put his finger anywhere but on the nuclear button.

And before I forget, maybe Mr Gore should also consider planting a few passionate smackers on Alan Greenspan in public. It might help to reinforce the image of a steady hand on the tiller rather than merely on the Tipper...