Recent commentary from National Journal:
Political Pulse: Growing Doubts About the Death Penalty, by William Schneider (June 14, 2000)
Suddenly, the politics of capital punishment appears to be changing.
Social Studies: The Microsoft Case -- Fair, Necessary, and Totally Random, by Jonathan Rauch (June 14, 2000)
Let's be clear with ourselves about what the law is doing in the Microsoft case: whistling in the dark.
Political Pulse: Al's Campaign Can Be Born Again, by William Schneider (June 7, 2000)
Gore's Los Angeles convention speech this summer will be the defining moment of his political career.
Media: Off the Money, by William Powers (June 7, 2000)
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Legal Affairs: Gore and the Buddhist Temple -- a Phony Scandal?, by Stuart Taylor Jr. (June 7, 2000)
The charge that Gore knowingly went to the temple to shake down monks and nuns is demonstrably false.
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Media:Drama Club
I know we're famous and powerful and so forth, but put that out of your mind. Think of us as a little-theater group just putting on a play. We don't want it to seem scripted or planned, though. It's supposed to look haphazard, like a backyard production of The Wizard of Oz or The Fantasticks thrown together by a bunch of neighborhood kids. Spontaneous and natural.
True, we know exactly what we're doing. Sophocles, even Spielberg, would be lucky to know half of what we know about how to grip an audience and keep 'em gripped. But just shush up about all that and we'll tell you our secret.
See, it's all about dramatic reversals. You build a character up, then you take him down. Over and over. It's really that simple.
In this new show, we've got two leads, Rick and Hillary, and each is just a dream to work with. We've directed Hillary before, of course. We go back years together, a thousand shows. We know each other like family. She does her Light-of-the-World thing just pitch-perfect, but I don't have to tell you that. And on the other side, nobody but nobody has the ruthless power-maniac down like she does. Wow. I mean, for a second you're thinking Richard Nixon is back in a bad pantsuit, you know?
And this Rick guy: a total pro. He shows up on Day One, the quiet understudy whom nobody even remembers meeting, and it's like, Hello, Laurence Olivier. We say, "Do 'Richie Cunningham runs for Senate,'" and, bam, he owns it, first take. Then repeats it, gesture for gesture, on command for several back-to-back shows. I'll never forget that Sunday. He waltzed into the role.
You want to see how we've plotted out Rick so far? Easy: Our whole outline is right there on Lexis-Nexis. Skip the stories themselves, just read the headlines chronologically. Here, let me show you. I'll put all actual headlines in capital letters, like they do in movie scripts.
Scene 1, a darkened stage. It's moments after the fall of Rudy. A single spotlight cuts through the emptiness, and Hillary steps smoothly under it. Everything looks perfect for her.
"BET IT ALL ON HILLARY; SHE'S RIDING A WORLD-CLASS LUCKY STREAK." See how that creates a certain expectation with the audience? And that's a real headline, too, from the Philadelphia Daily News. The rest of these are just as real, I promise.
OK, now time for a cry of agony in the other camp. "NEW YORK REPUBLICANS IN A PICKLE OVER GIULIANI." Low, ominous music, maybe a little Wagner. But wait! Here comes news from stage right -- see that wire-story headline? "LAZIO SAYS HE WILL RUN AGAINST HILLARY FOR SENATE." A silence, then more ominous music. "WITH GIULIANI OUT OF RACE, WILL INTEREST WANE?"
You get the audience thinking he's not up to the challenge, see? We know better, of course. We've been covering this character for years, and he's a genius, cool and dangerous like dry ice. But we've got to reveal that slowly, string them along for a few more scenes. "CLINTON VS. LAZIO: RICK LACKS RUDY'S WEIGHT." He's Little Ricky, a boy, a rube, a joke. You can almost feel the hope fading, up in the third balcony. "HILLARY UP 14 AS GIULIANI DROPS OUT AND LAZIO STEPS IN." And look at this Gannett gem: "GOP LAWMAKERS LAMENT LOSS OF GIULIANI CANDIDACY."
But then comes that glorious Sunday. Rick does all the talk shows and suddenly -- a new theme here, something tinkling and bright, slowly building Gershwin, maybe -- everything changes. It's his first reversal, and he does it exactly as scripted, a perfect 10. "LAZIO HARDLY THE RIGHT-WING IDEOLOGUE HILLARY CLINTON PORTRAYS" is next, and isn't it delicious? Coming from us, those are golden words, a kind of coronation.
Then, "FIRST LADY MAY BE SORRY THAT RUDY IS GONE," and "HILLARY HAS NOTHING WRAPPED UP," and it all leads up to (brass-section flourishes), "POLL: RICK LAZIO IN DEAD HEAT WITH HILLARY." They're breathless now, on the edge of their seats. What a ride, what a show! And we're still in Act 1.
I'll be honest about the fat lip. It was a last-minute thing that Rick came up with himself. The guy is just a natural. "Do it!" we said without a moment's hesitation. And when he was finished and running around the stage with that ridiculous bulge and those stitches, look what we did with it: "BATTLE-SCARRED LAZIO IS OFFICIALLY GOP CHOICE TO FACE CLINTON." From boy to battle-scarred, in a matter of days! Hot damn! There's no business like our business.
Here you drive it home one more time with, "LAZIO: THE 'MADE IN NEW YORK' CANDIDATE." Great, and now that he's up, where to take him? A little higher, literally, with a pure visual, that New York Times front-page photo of Rick and Hillary shaking hands. They both do the fake-natural thing so superbly. But the key here is, he's much taller. He's literally towering over her. Looks like she's gonna lose!
Which means it's time for our next reversal. "'DIRTY TRICKSTER' ON LAZIO PAYROLL." It was just this week, and in a Republican paper, even: the New York Post! Boom, here comes the Evil Rick.
You can hear a pin drop, all the way to the back rows. He's heading down down down, and you know where she's going. Nowhere but up, baby! Fasten your seat belts, theatergoers, it's going to be a bumpy ride.
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William Powers is media columnist for National Journal. He recently spent three months in Japan as a Japan Society Fellow, studying the role of reading in Japanese life. 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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