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  Recent commentary from National Journal: Legal Affairs: Gore's Shameless About Posing As a Populist, by Stuart Taylor Jr. (September 26, 2000) Gore has been one of the most assiduous solicitors of special interest money ever to seek the presidency. Social Studies: Want to Elevate Politics? Accentuate The Negative, by Jonathan Rauch (September 26, 2000) Stigmatizing attack ads dumbs down campaigns and hobbles challengers -- exactly the wrong thing to do. Media: Money on the Brain, by William Powers (September 26, 2000) The money media (print division) may have a wealth-obsessed heart, but they have a brain, and it works. Political Pulse: How Al Turned the Corner, by William Schneider (September 26, 2000) When the campaign market for new leadership tanked, George W. lost his lead. Legal Affairs: Let's Make the Federal Hate Crimes Law Broader -- Much Broader, by Stuart Taylor Jr. (September 19, 2000) Why not add to the list of hate crimes those motivated by indifference to life or health? Media: Wallflowers in Paradise, by William Powers (September 19, 2000) Could be that only the ever-so-reluctant press can do something about entertainment-biz violence. Political Pulse: A Duke-Out Over ... Paradigms, by William Schneider (September 19, 2000) Amazingly, this campaign is turning out to be a big debate on fundamental issues. The Campaign: On the Air -- RATS, Ratings, Hyprocisy, and Tiny Tim, by Carl M. Cannon (September 19, 2000) Politicians are beginning to point out that television is the emperor wearing no clothes. More from National Journal. Discuss this article in the Politics & Society conference of Post & Riposte. |
 The Campaign:The Sweet Science Is Only Sweet If You Win It's not cool for journalists to admit they actually cover the presidential "horse race." Thankfully, William Schneider -- pollster, professor, and pundit for CNN (and National Journal) -- recently made a brief on-air attempt to defend the practice by saying campaigns are horse races, and the alternative to covering them is sitting them out. Schneider is right, although horse racing has always been an imprecise metaphor: Even the slowest Kentucky Derby is over in about 2 minutes. Presidential elections, with their quadrennial cycles and year-round training, more closely resemble the Olympics or, perhaps, baseball's pennant races, which take months to unfold and heat up the same time of year presidential campaigns do. Two Ohio-born political junkies use a different lingo for handicapping these races, however, and it may be the best of all. Gerald Austin, a veteran Democratic political consultant, and George E. Condon Jr., the Washington bureau chief of Copley Newspapers, believe that one way to keep track is to determine who "won" each week -- as though each week were a round in a boxing match. Prizefights are often 10-round affairs. Lose enough rounds, you lose the fight. In a campaign, there are nine or 10 weeks between Labor Day and Election Day. You lose enough weeks, you lose the election. That's the theory. Scoring an election in this manner is one way to supplement the polling data that overwhelms everything else. It also puts a campaign in its real context. Boxing, the "sweet science," tells us things about campaigns that political science cannot. A couple of qualifiers: First, although late rounds are weighted more heavily than early ones, there are no knockouts in presidential politics (at least not since 1972, when the McGovern corner threw in the towel on vice presidential candidate Thomas Eagleton). Second, the Austin-Condon method only works in close elections -- Ronald Reagan could have "lost" every week to Walter Mondale in 1984 and he would have still been re-elected. But on Labor Day this year, the race between Al Gore and George W. Bush was as close as elections get. It wasn't just a statistical dead heat, it was a literal one as well: Gore was drawing 47 percent support from likely voters in one Gallup Poll, as was Bush. So for the next six weeks let's keep track. To ensure candid scoring, we'll keep secret the identities of our bipartisan, revolving panel of judges. This was Week Three, but let's recap the first two rounds: Week One: Labor Day through Sept. 9 went to Al Gore. Who knew that a Jewish running mate, or the kiss of Tipper at the convention, or a simple phrase, "I stand here tonight as my own man," would help propel Gore out of Los Angeles on a rocket? Or that Bush would think that a good counterpunch to Gore's detailed 191-page economic plan would be to get cute about debates? Our judges had it 10-8 -- thorough domination in boxing's scoring system. Week Two: Sept. 10-16 wasn't much different. Gore appeared on Oprah, a friendly venue to be sure, looking relaxed, pleased, and in good command of what he wanted to say to women voters. Gore and running mate Joe Lieberman also took full advantage of a Federal Trade Commission report showing that the entertainment industry markets violence to kids. Bush found himself bogged down by a dumb flap about a television ad with the word RATS in it. Gore, 10-9. Week Three began with the smooch, and none too soon for Bush. Fainthearted Republicans at the bottom of the ticket were beginning to bleat like scared babies. But when Bush opened Oprah Winfrey's show by bussing the popular megastar on the cheek, things began looking up. The smooch made the front pages of The Washington Post and The New York Times. Bush followed his gallant greeting with a smooth performance on Oprah that showcased him as being comfortable in his own skin, witty, good-humored, and, well, compassionate, a word the Bush campaign might want to start using again. The week had started with the release of a respected independent poll showing Bush leading Gore, 49 percent to 45 percent. These numbers, while within the margin of error, were the reverse of several other polls. And as the boys and girls in Austin, Texas, pointed out, this poll, done by Democrat Celinda Lake and Republican Ed Goeas, had a better track record four years ago than any other major poll. On the Sunday talk shows, Gore surrogates were interrogated about a 1995 memo written for Gore by a Democratic Party official that outlined the Vice President's talking points for a fund-raising call to a wealthy Texas trial lawyer. The memo implied that the lawyer, Walter Umphrey, was only going to give money if and when President Clinton vetoed tort reform. Clinton did veto tort reform, and Umphrey did give the money -- some $800,000 from him and his law partners found its way into Democratic coffers. The Gore campaign responded that Gore had not, in fact, actually made the call. This begged the larger question, and Bush, campaigning in California, said that even the appearance of a possible connection between the veto and the subsequent contributions was "disturbing." Knowing the public's mood, Bush did not fall into the familiar trap of calling for yet another special prosecutor. "Americans are tired of investigations and scandal," he said, "and the best way to get rid of them is to elect a new President, who will bring a new Administration, who will restore honor and dignity to the White House." Bush made no noticeable verbal miscues this week -- no small feat -- and to sharpen his message, the Bush brain trust sent for one of the most articulate young writers in the conservative firmament. Jay Nordlinger, currently managing editor of National Review, dropped everything and flew to Austin, Texas, to lend a hand. Meanwhile, Bush's running mate Dick Cheney was getting some airtime for his critique of the nifty pirouette that Gore and Lieberman performed in Hollywood. In Week Two, the pair hinted darkly that there would be hell to pay if the entertainment industry didn't stop marketing violence to children. But this week, at a Beverly Hills fund-raiser that raked in $4.2 million (and where one of the hosts poked fun of Jesus Christ as a way of needling Bush), Al and Joe assured the movie crowd that they didn't really mean it. "We will noodge you," Lieberman said, employing a Yiddish expression that means to scold gently, "but we will never become censors." Then, The Boston Globe published an article unraveling the veracity of a claim Gore made in a recent Florida speech to seniors -- that his mother-in-law pays three times as much for arthritis medicine as the Gores do for the same medicine they give Shiloh, the family dog. "This is an example in our household," Gore said. This assertion, wrong on several levels, brought to mind Gore's disquieting habit of making up facts on the fly and inserting them into policy debates -- and of using his own life or family as props while doing so. In this instance, Gore maintained that his wife's mother, who lives with the Gores, pays $108 a month for the arthritis medicine marketed under the trade name Lodine, while the same drug sold under the name EtoGesic costs only $37.80 a month. As it turns out, Gore quoted the wholesale, not retail, price of EtoGesic; and he did so because the inspiration of the anecdote apparently was not his own household bills, but a highly partisan House Democratic white paper on prescription drugs. Gore appears to have been comparing 500 milligram doses to 300 milligram doses; he didn't account for whatever medical insurance Tipper's mother has; and he couldn't say why the Gores aren't buying a widely used generic version of the drug that sells for about 40 cents per pill. By Thursday, the staff's efforts at damage control had drawn media attention to the fact that Gore hasn't held a general press availability since mid-July. It's beginning to be obvious why his campaign wants to keep him scripted: This week in Las Vegas, the Vice President attempted to connect with an audience of Teamsters: "I still remember the lullabies I heard as a child." Then, without missing a beat, he sang the famous ditty that is the theme song of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, "Look for the Union Label." Gore was off-key, and in more ways than one. The song was written in 1975 when he was 27 years old. On the Bush campaign plane, the governor counterpunched. "Al Gore will say anything to get elected." If Bush looked happy, he had a right: He was winning his first round since the Democratic convention. Our panel scores the week 10-9, Bush. Bushism of the week: "Smarts come in all kinds of different ways." (Bush to Oprah Winfrey) Goreism of the week: "We've been through a lot. For me, things changed after the assassination of President Kennedy. Then Nixon was elected. Ugghhh. The Vietnam War unfolded. I went to the Vietnam War. I have felt more disillusioned than anybody here. I guarantee it." (Gore at a Hollywood fund-raiser) What do you think? Discuss this article in the Politics & Society conference of Post & Riposte. More from National Journal. More on politics and society in Atlantic Unbound and The Atlantic Monthly. Carl M. Cannon is a correspondent for National Journal. This column appears every week in National Journal, a weekly magazine covering politics and government published in Washington, D.C. For information on National Journal Group publications, see NationalJournal.com. All material copyright © 2000 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved. | ||||||||||||
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