Democracy, said Plato, "is a charming system of variety and disorder.''

Israel's rules for the democractic process have always been slightly askew. From the start, the free press has been if not shackled, then at least reined in by security considerations; religion has been kept off the free marketplace of ideas; and pluralism has been frowned upon in the name of a desire for national consensus.

There are several theories as to why this is so, with the most convincing being the simple fact that the founders of the state all came out of either eastern European or Asian backgrounds, where democracy was never exactly a strong point of the political culture.

Some argue that a certain prediliction among Jews for factionalism and argument should have promoted a democratic ethos but instead resulted in mere factionalism tinged with fanaticism and functioning according to the rules of the jungle.

Others have argued that the Talmud itself is inherently democratic, since it's based on the principal of persuasive argument, rather than some inherited, genetic or mere political authority, winning the day, but that as soon as the Talmud was complete, it's sensibility of learning as dialogue turned into learning as rote.

And while Meir Kahane's theory that, by definition, a Jewish state cannot be democratic for it must inevitably discriminate against non-Jews, has some repugnant and horrifying logical conclusions, there is a kernel of truth in the idea that the exclusionary criteria for immigration to Israel -- the Law of Return -- being based on something other than merit, has resulted in some rather unfair practices, at least concerning families torn apart by the galestorms of wars.

And when added on top of all those problems is the very real problem of the memory-induced paranoia legitimately felt by both Jew and Palestinian -- and who is to say whether the legitimate paranoia of 2,000 years is more or less weightier than the legitimate paranoia of even a single generation, at least in the minds of the paranoid -- it's not difficult to understand why too often the charm is missing from Plato's definition of democracy.

One reason for the lack of charm is in the confusion that exists between the wisdom of the public and the wisdom of the individual.

In a democracy, the wisdom of the public is tangible.

The public was right to dump the Labour Party in 1977, because the party had become corrupt. And it was right to reelect Begin in 1981, because he had not yet finished what he set out to do when he was elected in 1977. The public was even right in 1984 to elect a national unity government, for only by coopting the Likud into a Labour government, could the Labour Party get the army out of Lebanon, or halt inflation.

But the public's collective wisdom does not make the individual member of the public wise. This should be obvious, except for the fact that as the parties go on tv every night, holding up their circus mirrors to each other and a much larger mirror to each of us, they insist on relying on what individual members of the public have to say as proof that as a party, they are on the right course.

There is an entertainment value in this man-in-thestreet as strategist or political commentator, but it is also a step in a dangerous direction: the lynch mob in all its variuous forms.

A lynch mob works because even the most foolish and stupid people can understand the message. Lynch mobs thrive on simplicity, on emotion, on slogans that resonate on the internal chords of hatred.

Individuals lose their identity in a lynch mob, but lynch mobs begin when the public, having lost faith in the duly authoritative institutions of their community, find it easier to have faith in someone they know and recognize, someone who in the half-ignorance of the street knows intuitively how to strum on the internal chords of hatred that the simpleminded confuse with answers.

In our society, the weave of democracy is manufactured from an unusual intensity of both the issues at stake and the emotions that are spawned by those issues. This results in a fabric that is difficult to tear, but easily frays where it has been been worn down by the trampling feet of the mob.

There really are only two political ideas in this country -- those who regard Israel as a real state in a real world of powers bigger and smaller, and those who regard the state as the symbol of belief in either a divine will or an ideological cause. This is not the distinction between liberal and conservative, between socialist and capitalist, between religious and secular, populist or elitist, or even educated and uneducated (which may be the most important political distinction to make in Israeli society).

These two views are two different ways of seeing the self, the other, and the world. Whatever wisdom the public will demonstrate this election, it will be saying more about itself than about the politicians.