SO HOW COME A REPUBLICAN stole the thunder from the Democratic candidates in the Presidential Debate last night at Drexel University? If you didn't watch the debate on MSNBC broadcast live from West Philadelphia, you missed one of the beautiful moments of American politics -- like when a UFO-spying midget from Ohio makes more sense than his taller and wealthier competitors for job of president.

While John Edwards and Barack Obama did their best to barbecue Hillary Clinton on live TV, the one shrimp at the barbie, Dennis Kucinich, laid down a a napalm airstrike that glowed all the way to the White House. Why? -- Kucinich asked in outraged tones equal the the importance of what he said -- do we have a nut like George Bush still in office?

Earlier the former boy-mayor of Cleveland and the current longshot for the Democratic nomination had elicited the most authentic barely-stifled applause from the polite Drexel University audience by pointing out, accurately, that George Bush and his henchmen have suspended the Constitution, waged an unjust and illegal war, violated their oathes of office and should be impeached.

Yes, he said it. And to hear it from a candidate on the same stage as the Democratic frontrunner, whose husband was impeached for lying about a BJ rather than a foreign war, was a thrilling moment. Even the most articulate Democratic candidates seem to be tiptoeing past the cemetery of American lives, fortune and honor, too afraid to state the obvious.

But then Kucinich took it up a notch. He basically said the President is crazy. As proof he offered Bush's bewildering decision to publicly and repeatedly accuse Iran of fomenting "World War III." The president of the most powerful nation on earth should not be using the WWIII-word. It tends to scare the bejabbers out of the rest of the world. A world that already has seen this president use the non-existent WMD-word to justify an invasion of an irritating but soverign nation half a planet away.

Kucinich said what we all know. He said, "We all know that the invasion of Iraq was about oil." And now a barrel of oil costs twice as much as it did before Bush's transparent attempt to secure Middle East oil reserves by overthrowing the most unpopular dictator in the Musilim world. And what has Bush learned from his failure? He thinks he can get away with it again. New country, same approach. Except now he's amped up accusations of "weapons of mass destruction" into "World War III"\

No, Bush isn't nuts. We are for pretending he's sane.

But despite what Kucinich said so effectively, the long-shot candidate for president who proabably gained the most from the Democratic throwdown in Philadelphia was a Republican. Supporters of Texas Congressman Ron Paul, an anti-war anti-tax Republican, camped out behind the outdoor set of Chris Matthews for the entire hour of his post-debate analysis show on MSNBC. "Ron Paul Revolution" signs were the most prominent and unavoidable backdrop among a cadre of candidate poster bearers.

Then, as if it was scheduled, anyone turning to Jay Leno immediately after the post-debate show ended, saw candidate Ron Paul killing the Tonight Show audience with his wry humor and straight talk.

Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich are the monkey wrench candidates in this presidential election. They seem to make more sense and speak more clearly than any of the candidates who actually have a chance-in-hell of becoming our next president. Like Ross Perot, we're more in love with their blunt and startling honesty than their possible success.

It's a shame too. The way things are weighed these days, by the media, by the political parties, by the money, by the irresistible flow of meaningless information that demands an answer as to who will win an election more than a year away. And we all buy into it. We are as impatient for resolution as the impatient forces we mock or pretend to ignore.

If you didn't watch the Democratic Presidential debate last night you may have missed the last chance to take a good look at all the candidates -- one of whom you may actually like for reasons that suprise you - before, one by one, each slip into the obscurity that comes with failing to play the game dishonestly enough to win.