FOOLISHLY, I thought it was that clever old Voltaire who first said: “The more things change, the more they are the same.” Looking it up, I found it was the lesser-known Alphonse Karr.

And Karr’s oddly cynical principle of plus ca change seems particularly true of politics and politicians. Think about it.

Thus Gore Vidal’s engrossing 1960 political comedy melodrama, “The Best Man,” now retitled, for some odd reason, “Gore Vidal’s The Best Man” – which makes it sound as if it’s promising some freakily egocentric excursion into autobiography – resurfaced last night in a beautifully acted production at the Virginia Theater.

It’s still as topical as most of tomorrow’s paid political announcements on TV – the good old days of cut, slash, malign, realign, sneer and smear remain with us like death and taxes.

Vidal, appropriately, has not seen fit to amend a word or phrase.

To be honest – one of those phrases politicians so favor – things have indeed changed somewhat since 1960, rather like furniture in a room. For example, Vidal’s shenanigans are set in Philadelphia at an open nominating convention of what is clearly, although never specifically named, the Democratic Party.

Now, we haven’t had an open presidential nominating convention, one that is not merely a coronation of the party’s anointed, for many decades.

And, indeed, just a little of Vidal’s still effervescent, sparkling dialogue now sounds somewhat dated. Yet politics’ smoky back rooms, with their fumes of scotch and bourbon, where deals are dealt and contrivances contrived, still exist, even though doubtless no one smokes and designer water is the tipple of choice.

Vidal has given us a well-made boulevard comedy and one of the very few to deal overtly with the art and craft of American politics. To put it more bluntly, it is about mud-slinging, or what is now known as negative campaigning.

There is a good guy, a patrician with sound liberal principles, and a bad guy, lower-class, ambitious, ruthless and cursed with a 5 o’clock shadow that starts around 3 p.m.

An aging former president, a lovable drunk with his heart in the right place but his guts shot to pieces, is tantalizing both candidates with the possibility of an endorsement.

But suddenly all bets, previously favoring the charming, womanizing liberal, are off, as the bad guy announces his intention to release a mental-health report on his opponent, who once suffered a nervous breakdown – prophetic shades of the real-life vice-presidential candidate, Sen. Thomas Eagleton, decades later.

Wait a minute! There is just possibly something in the bad guy’s past that, if revealed or just suggested, would send Middle America (not to mention the rest of the country) reeling.

So that’s it. Will our hero descend to the amoral level of his opponent’s naked ambition? Will he sling dirt with the rest of the boys?

Actually, the morality is a little more fuzzy around the edges than Vidal seems to believe, but it’s a good story … and you certainly want to know what happens.

Vidal has decked out his sometimes obvious drama with zesty, zinging dialogue and composite portraits of politicians past – here and there, a touch of Adlai Stevenson, Richard Nixon, John Kennedy, Harry Truman – that cry out suggestively.

The present production is made all the more welcome by Ethan McSweeney’s fast-paced staging and a sweetly balanced cast, in which you have such Broadway meisters as Mark Blum, Jonathan Hadary and, especially, the consummate Elizabeth Ashley in minor cameo roles.

As the noble liberal, Spalding Gray is excellent – up to a point. As I felt a few seasons back, about “Our Town,” Gray, an absolute master of the one-on-one monologue, seems a little awkward inhabiting any skin other than his own.

Chris Noth (today, best-known as Mr. Big when he is having sex in the city!) as his power-driven antagonist, and a divinely vulgar Christine Ebersole and a divinely upper-class Michael Learned as the Washington wives, are all spot-on super.

But the play’s best role is that of the aging ex-president, and as Tracy did before – though in a quite different, more belligerent fashion – the unsurpassable Charles Durning charges down all before him, like a pet rhinoceros in an Olympic mood.

A fun evening – more fun than any of those interminable talking-head TV shows, and politically probably much more relevant. So Vote for Vidal! He should never have given up the theater, as he did politics, as a lost cause.

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GORE VIDAL’S THE BEST MAN (1/2)

Virginia Theater, 245 W. 52nd St. (212) 239-6200. Through Dec. 31.