There's one little flaw in Maureen Dowd's argument today:

Presidential campaigns trace the patterns of mythological adventure, as contenders strive to show they are superior in the knightly virtues of temperance, loyalty and courage.

Once candidates showed that they had completed the "hero-task" by highlighting their war exploits — J.F.K. and PT 109, George Bush senior getting shot down as a young Navy pilot over Chichi Jima.

Candidates in the Vietnam War generation who chose not to go to Vietnam had to find more personal dragons and giants to slay. Bill Clinton told the story of confronting an abusive and alcoholic stepfather; George W. Bush recounted overcoming alcoholism and career drift by embracing Christ....

...a race rooted mainly in attacking the president may not take Dr. Dean far enough. Voters want someone who's been through the fire. They care about character. They want to know the evolution of the man, even if it's a myth.

The flaw is that in 2000 George W. Bush got fewer votes from the Great Unwashed, for whom Dowd claims to speak, that Al Gore did. Gore didn't talk much about his own "character"-- maybe a bit in the convention speech. And what the public thought it knew about his life story was nonsense concocted by the GOP and spread by willing accomplices in the press, as Bob Somerby's Daily Howler points out regularly (e.g., here).

Yet Gore got half a million votes more than the guy who told us his liquor cabinet was personally emptied by God.