Op-Ed
The oddest thing about this presidential campaign is the extent to which it is almost entirely focused on Gore. His every utterance is parsed in unsparing exegesis by the media. Every nuance of his wardrobe is examined in endless detail. (If he'd taken to golfers' brilliant colors rather than earth tones, what do we think this would have said about his foreign policy decisions?) His every change of debate strategy is read as a clue to the inner man. Indeed, the fact that he changed debate strategy is trumpeted as evidence that he suffers from multiple personality disorder.
My favorite new line by the Bushies is: How Dare They Call Him Stupid? Not that any Gorey has ever called Bush stupid -- but if you imply that they have, it makes them sound condescending. This is getting to be the problem that dare not speak its name.
A lady named Lisa Kee stood up and asked, "How will your tax proposals affect me as a middle-class, 34-year-old single person with no dependents?"
So Gore told how his proposal would affect her, and then it was Bush's turn. He said Gore's plan would cost a whole lot of money -- "a lot more than we have."
He then explained: "I think also what you need to think about is not the immediate, but what about Medicare? You get a plan that will include prescription drugs, a plan that will give you options. Now, I hope people understand that Medicare today is important, but it doesn't keep up with the new medicines. If you're a Medicare person, on Medicare, you don't get the new procedures. You're stuck in a time warp in many ways.
From afar, we may be inclined to smirk at the activities of humanoid creatures who inhabit the only life-covered orb in what they call "the solar system." But all of us should do our best to understand events on Earth, no matter how strange they may be.
The watery planet, located 93 million miles from its sun, is currently dominated by one nation, the United States of America. Because of its preeminent power on that globe, the governance of the USA is of considerable interest.
While admirable in some respects, Earthlings -- who number several billion -- are not the most self-aware of beings. Their conceits and pretensions are apt to calcify into formulaic rites, often embraced with credulous fervor.
And so it goes in the United States, where a new leader is selected once every 1,460 cycles of darkness and light. Prior to the election, in which some of the USA's citizens vote, events occur which are known as "debates."
Tuesday night's debate gave us the real Al Gore and the real George W. Bush. Gore won -- he may even have killed -- but he's still annoying. One can only conclude that that smarmy, pietistic streak of his is absolutely authentic; that's exactly who he really is.
He's sharp as a razor, knows his onions (does anyone else outside of Congress know what "Dingell-Norwood" is?) and will probably be a good president. Bush not only amply demonstrated his vast ignorance but also was so profoundly misleading on his supposed role in the Texas Patients' Bill of Rights that I have to conclude he knowingly lied.
It's possible to not know or be confused about a lot of things, but Bush cannot possibly believe what he said: "As a matter of fact, I brought Republicans and Democrats together to do just that in the state of Texas, to get a patients' bill of rights through." He was there, I was there, and that's flat untrue. He reviewed the details of the bill accurately, so it was clear that he had recently prepped on the subject.
The ever-thrilling topic of military spending is our text du jour. We seem to have two categories of comment about our candidates on the issues. The first is that there's not a dime's worth of difference between them, and the second is that they are separated by great yawning gulfs of difference and that the fate of the nation hangs in the balance. Well, on the military, there are differences, but not enough.
George W. Bush wants to spend more on the military, and Al Gore wants to spend even more than that. The problem is that's not the problem. The problem is that we spend money on the military stupidly, and this in turn affects everything else, because this election is about choices and priorities.
More for the military means less for education, child care, health care and all the rest; the military is still the biggest ticket item in "discretionary" spending.
In the world according to news media, the U.S. government is situated on high moral ground -- in contrast to some of the intractable adversaries. "The conflict that had been so elaborately dressed in the civilizing cloak of a peace effort has been stripped to its barest essence: Jew against Arab, Arab against Jew," the New York Times reported from Jerusalem.
Soon afterwards, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright proclaimed: "The cycle of violence has to be stopped." Such pronouncements from Washington get a lot of respectful media play in our country.
Rarely do American journalists explore the ample reasons to believe that the United States is part of the oft-decried cycle of violence. Nor, in the first half of October, was there much media analysis of the fact that the violence overwhelmingly struck at Palestinian people.
If you're in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Illinois or Missouri, the presidential race is high-tension and inescapable. The continuous blat from the air wars -- the television and radio advertising campaigns -- is everywhere. More money is being spent on this presidential election than ever before, but it's being spent in fewer than a dozen states, so the concentrated effect is practically stunning.
When we decide that yesterday's breakthrough purchase has become today's outmoded albatross, we may gripe about the hassle and expense of upgrading to new systems. Sometimes, no doubt, we buy more for reasons of consumer vanity than practical functionality.
But the common determination to keep up with the (Digital) Joneses isn't mere status-seeking. As the Internet continues to gain momentum, we're apt to believe -- for good reasons -- that we must not be left behind. In professional and financial realms, those who lack access to the latest in techno-communication are likely to find themselves at a distinct disadvantage.
AUSTIN, Texas -- Ooops. Uh, actually, we rather notoriously elect judges in Texas, including those on the state Supreme Court. However, due to a series of early retirements, Bush has been called upon to name four justices, so one can see how he might be confused about it.
Since he brought it up, it's worth taking a look at Bush's picks for the state Supremes, since they do tell us rather a lot about his taste in judges.
The event was a modest announcement by the Office of the Special Prosecutor that there is insufficient evidence to bring a charge of wrongdoing against Bill or Hillary Clinton in the Whitewater investigation.
That story lasted exactly one news cycle, and then we dropped it like a hot rock. If that's a one-cycle story, just what the HELL has been going on for the last six years? Six years, $52 million, and there is no there there? There never was, and I'm sorry to play I-told-you-so, but I told you so. So what was this madness about?
David Maraniss of The Washington Post has this nice riff that he does about Bill Clinton as the Republicans' Moby Dick. They've had their harpoons in this white whale since '92, but they can't kill him -- he keeps dragging them to their deaths in his wake.