Sooner or later, it was going to come down to dick size. Donald Trump isn’t so much inventing something new, as he is exposing a “preference cascade” for the vulgar. The culture changed a long time ago, Trump isn’t causing that—he’s merely creating a permission structure for us to quit pretending otherwise.

Al Gore was a pioneer in this effort. Younger readers probably won’t remember the Rolling Stone cover photo of Gore, where he—to paraphrase Spinal Tap—looked as if he had an armadillo in his trousers. He was running against George W. Bush in 2000, and was desperately attempting to pretend he was the Alpha Male. He wasn’t. But somebody (perhaps Naomi Wolf?) keenly understood that, beneath all the bullshit—you know, leadership, machismo, policy differences—it all comes down to the fact that size matters.

Now, it’s unclear whether or not Gore’s package was artificially enhanced (perhaps only Tipper and a hotel masseuse know the answer), but the fact is this was obviously deliberate. It was part of a larger plan to make him seem like The Man. We saw a hint of the same thing when Al Gore attempted to invade Dubya’s space and physically intimidate him during a presidential debate. That also didn’t work out so well. But it’s clear what he was trying to prove.