In the end, this election is probably not going to turn on something important. The October surprise, the grand, explosive news finish everyone talks about, is less likely to close the deal for one or other of the candidates than some dopey, misappropriated sound bite that cuts through to the undecided airheads and green lights commitment.

The Mary Cheney flap brought this home with a vengeance, as the latest Wall Street Journal poll showed Senator Kerry slipping in four battleground states after the third debate. The one thing a candidate can’t do when looking for sly new ways to put the boot in is behave out of character. Never in a million years would the elegant, stentorian Mr. Kerry lean across the dinner table and say, “So, Dick – how’s that LESBIAN daughter of yours?”- let alone do the equivalent in front of 50 million people.

Even though Mr. Kerry spent last Friday compounding his tonal mistake about Ms. Cheney by failing to do one of those apologies which begins “had I known I might be hurting the feelings of blah blah blah” (and further compounding the error by allowing Mary Beth Cahill her own galumphing she’s “fair game” gaffe), he clearly knew he’d screwed up. After two days of being bashed on the subject he looked 90 years old in his interview last Friday night with CNN’s Candy Crowley. Grayer, because he can no longer risk getting a much-needed brunette rinse lest he incur a pansy write-up. Ashen, because he can no longer take the chance that Internet split screens will show his pallid self beside a suspiciously oranged-up, sun-lamped version. And creased with furrows, because it’s not worth the flak if Teresa Heinz Kerry’s botox guy gets caught with his little black bag on his way up to the campaign suite. Mr. Kerry looked heartsick as he trudged back over his debate points about less important things, like the terrorist magnet President Bush has made of Iraq.

At this precarious moment any distraction is a disaster for Mr. Kerry, even when it’s Bill O’Reilly’s sexual harassment problems. Gleeful Democrats who could have been spending useful hours signing up disenfranchised minority youth for voter registration instead spent whole mornings poring over the Fox moralist’s phone sex fantasies. The dazzling details could be found at the Web site where mortification lives: TheSmoking-Gun.com. According to one of the site’s founders, William Bastone, the harassment complaint filed by Mr. O’Reilly’s accuser, his producer Andrea Mackris, is the most popular viewing page in the Gun’s seven-year history, beating even the 57 page transcript of Kobe Bryant’s interview with the police about the alleged rape in Colorado.

Legal filings have become the new, easily available docu-porn. Ever since the Starr Report, what used to be the knowing gossip of the power elite has become democratized so all can share. Why should lawyers, plaintiffs, and investigative journalists be the only ones to regale each other with the details of what Mr. O’Reilly would like to do to Ms. Mackris in the shower with a loofah mitt? Amateur novelists can read the complaint for its definitive character study. The technologically minded can ask how Mr. O’Reilly can manipulate a vibrator and hold a phone at the same time. Sociology students can note that despite Mr. O’Reilly’s insistent blue-collar shtick many of the harassment scenes take place in Da Silvano’s, the chic Manhattan restaurant that’s a favorite of Vogue editor Anna Wintour. What happens if the audiotape surfaces on the day of the election? Whole precincts of swing voters would stay home and play it.

One side effect of docu-porn is how it lowers the bar for what’s acceptable to talk about at the office. Just as Kenneth Starr gave oral sex its social debut as a topic for the water cooler, so Mr. O’Reilly, on the eve of his book tour for “The O’Reilly Factor for Kids: A Survival Guide for American’s Families,” has made phone sex and vibrator preference the small talk at curriculum night. Part of the frisson of docu-porn is knowing that we are all one click away from an e-mail or cell phone leak from our own personal theaters of embarrassment. After Eliot Spitzer’s latest swoop on the e-mail of the Marsh & McLennan insurance company, Wall Street honchos were reminded again this week that the only way to escape the scythe of the New York attorney general is to take your hard drive for a ride every weekend to the Gambino landfill.

The truth is that every new piece of technology is put to the service of America’s addiction to gossip and only a world-shaking event like a terrorist outrage puts us temporarily into rehab. This is one of the strangest aspects of the post-9/11 world. How fast we returned to fiddling while the new Rome burned! The candidates have to confront it every day. Political trivia jousts for our attention with entertainment trivia – and forget everything else. Unless it can be reduced to a reality-show narrative it’s unlikely to penetrate the haze of fun media alternatives.

At my local dry cleaners after the last debate I encountered a young, female undecided I have been unscientifically tracking for political mood swings. “Made up your mind yet?” I asked brightly between gritted teeth. “Well, Kerry had the best facts,” she replied distractedly, “but I’m sort of drifting towards Bush.” Huh? “Well, Kerry telling the world Dick Cheney’s daughter was a lesbian was, like, really unfair.” No time now to point out that it was Mr. Cheney, not Mr. Kerry who reminded the world of this fact on the campaign trail. Put your money on it: Airheads are going to be the definitive swing voter on November 2nd.