In my household, Kerry won last night’s debate by a fleck. The fleck in question was saliva, spittle, to be precise, and it belonged to President George W. Bush.

Or did it?

Bush looked fine when he first appeared, but after a few minutes of vigorous debating, the right corner of Bush’s mouth became the base of operations for a small-but-noticeable white fleck of spittle.

I tried to concentrate on the substance of the debate, but I just couldn’t. Was it just a trick of the lighting and the camera angle? Was the President really debating, unaware, with a conspicuous emblem of apoplexy right there on the First Face? I switched to three different stations with three different cameras, and no - there was the spittle, making its presence known on all the networks. Even Fox News (”We Report, You Become Distracted by Presidential Effluvia”).

At first, as I watched the spittle throughout its 45 minute existence, I thought that it was merely an unfortunate bit of wayward salivation. But as the debate went on, and the spittle continually glistened in the spotlight, I began to suspect a conspiracy. Was it truly Bush’s spittle, or was it placed there by his enemies? Now, in the harsh light of day, I’m convinced that it’s the latter, and I’ve assembled a damning body of evidence.

For one, the spittle was on the right side of the President’s mouth. Anyone familiar President Bush knows that this is the “upslope” side of his mouth. It generally stays in place, anchoring the First Orifice. The left side is the lower one and the one that moves, making frequently forays downhill to convey wry amusement, disdain, or the now-iconic smirk. Therefore, simple physics would seem to dictate that a glob of spit would be much more likely to lodge itself on the left, down-slope side of President Bush’s mouth. A right-side spitball would have to work its way up from the mouth, and thereupon cling suspended from the President’s notably thin lips.

Is it possible? Yes. Is it likely? I’m not so sure; Bush has always been careful about his appearance, and he’s not the type to allow himself to appear to be frothing at John Kerry (which, thanks to the spittle, he appeared to be doing during his angrier moments). So the question is - How did the spittle get there? There are a couple of plausible possibilities:

The Liberal Media Theory - “Live” television has a delay, as we all know. Is it possible that some clever video producer digitally added the President’s so-called sputum before the video hit all the satellite uplinks? We know that Hollywood is extremely liberal, and that the special effects wizards of Tinseltown have given us such convincing but unreal digital creations as Jar Jar Binks, the “Toy Story” movies, and Renée Zellweger. Is it unreasonable to think that an America-hating geek might have had some interest in making the President appear rabid? No, no it’s not.

The Second Spitter Theory - Someone could have placed that spittle on the President. Certainly, John Kerry had motive and opportunity. And his military training clearly gave him the ability - no one will soon forget North Vietnam’s “Thousand Drops of Shame” in 1967, when Ho Chi Minh was seen in public with a dollop of giblet gravy in his beard, even though he’d eaten no gravy that day. It wasn’t until 1978 that the Navy SEALS confessed to placing that gravy. Did it happen again? Or what about Bob Schieffer, whose network was recently humiliated by the Bush White House? He easily could have targeted the President’s face, or arranged for a second spitter high above, in the rafters.

Either way, the damage was done in terms of America’s visceral reaction to the debate. Visible spittle, according to Professor Jan Spinaker of Columbia University’s School of Secretion Semiotics, “is a clear signifier of rage, apoplexy, and severe distemper, and in larger amounts can also be read as ‘drool’ (a signifier of simplemindedness, carelessness, idiocy).” So now it’s up to Republican spinmeisters to reframe the debate, and already, the Republicans are on top of this. One way is to make it a positive. Earlier today, campaign manager Ken Mehlman put it this way: “The President’s a real guy - spittin’, droolin’, occasionally farting lustily. The American people relate to that, and they don’t want some Massachusetts liberal who’ll hoard his bodily fluids while raising taxes.”

But the better approach is this: This is not about the President’s spittle, it’s about the liberal’s reaction to and possible responsibility for the spittle. Like the President’s economic failures, diplomatic missteps, deceptions in the run-up to war and miscalculations in its execution, it’s important for the Republicans to convey that this glob of saliva is not about President Bush. It’s about his opponents’ shameless opportunism, which aids and abets the enemy in a time of war. Only by turning the tables and then focussing on the real issues (”global tests,” the overly powerful ketchup lobby, Jesus) can we bring our nation through Spittlegate intact and move on to a brighter, drier tomorrow.