A freind points out that ...

[Dave Monroe]

... was pretty sure that that alleged Nostradamus prediction was at
least stretching the point, Bill.  However, on the premise that myths
perhaps tend to have some basis in fact, as you note, check out again
Century 1, Quatrain 87 ...

    D'un chef naistra sens hebet'
    Degenerant par savoir & par armes:

Which in what is apparently the standard Internet trans. indeed comes
out to ...

    To an old leader will be born an idiot heir,
    weak both in knowledge and in war.

Agreed, lacks that appealing turn-of-the-millenium specificity, but I've

no doubt that, in that great game of "Telephone" that e-mail tends to
engender, that's the ultimate source of that "quote" in circulation ...