The pre-game hype said that Bush would try to uplift us with his inauguration speech, and indeed he did. Try. Whether he succeeded or not isn’t what I’m concerned with today. It’s this business of “uplifting,” coupled with the whole “uniting” thing. As my friend Eric pointed out (though not on his site), a CNN headline yesterday read “Poll: Nation split on Bush as uniter or divider.”

“Uplift.” “Unite.” “Divide.” It got me thinking. And I think I’ve found a method for analyzing and predicting presidencies. I call it The Universal Lingerie Theory of American Presidents.”

It’s pretty simple: In order to categorize a particular president, you merely have to determine exactly what sort of lady’s undergarment he is, and this will let you know what sort of effect he’s going to have on the country. Yes, I realize that this model implies that we Americans are a bunch of boobs, but I don’t think that’s a very controversial stance.

There are those who are going to applaud me for this stunning advance in political science, and there are others who are going to deeply suspect that I’m just seizing any lame excuse to talk about breasts. I’m comfortable knowing that both of these things are true. Let’s take a look.

As with brassieres, we need to look for two major characteristics of a president in order to begin to classify him: 1) Does he seek to uplift us? and 2) Does he separate us or push us together? Any fair analysis of Bush (especially when you consider the campaign) would have to lead you to conclude that he lifts and separates. And he does so in an old-fashioned way. President Bush is a Cross Your Heart Bra. But more about him in a moment.

Clinton was a big uplifter too, but he sought to cram us all together. He was more of a Wonderbra, or perhaps even a fairly tight corset. Note that this causes extreme cleavage - the gap between left and right isn’t wide, but it’s very, very deep. We were all partially exposed too, which allowed us to breathe freely and take risks. This had good effects (the economic boom, the internet explosion) and bad (corporate indiscretions, the stock market bubble). After Clinton was removed, there was some short-term irritation, but few can deny the overall long-term benefits.

See how well this works? The first Bush was a conservative cotton bra without underwires: We were covered, but his uninspiring style allowed us to sag slightly and lose direction. Carter was an underwired demi-bra - he raised us up and brought us together but left us to sway in the wind. Ford might have been our only braless president; he was quite a relief after Nixon’s sportsbra (which sought to hold us all rather drably in place), but his uninspiring and directionless agenda left us far too vulnerable to entropy, which would have been disastrous over the long haul.

But back to our current leader: What can we expect from the Cross Your Heart Bra’s second term? More of the same, of course - the Cross Your Heart style doesn’t allow for much movement, and we will remain as divided as we were in early 2001. Our national environment will be firm and steady, we will remain engaged and uplifted, but we will be in two completely separated halves. The hatches are battened down, creating a controlled, airless environment wherein nothing unexpected pokes through (whatever the temperature). On the downside, a crisis situation can move us all in unwanted directions, and readjusting after these seismic events is difficult and uncomfortable.

Further study is of course necessary, and I’ll leave much of that to the academic community (also known as the Comments box). But for you women reading: The next time you find yourself conversing with someone whose gaze falls considerably south of eye contact, it may not be the actions of a lewd, harassing chauvinist (or unsubtle gay woman) - it may be the field work of an ardent political scientist.

Or both. Yeah, probably both.