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The political conventions will soon be upon us. In Philadelphia, the Republicans will fill the air with thunder about the moral pollution of Clintonism. In Los Angeles, the Democrats will tell Americans they've never had it better. So far, no contest. As a sales pitch, "you've never had it so good" beats "we'll end moral pollution" every time.

But who exactly has had it better in America over the past eight years? The crowd cheering Bush and Cheney in Philadelphia will mostly be feeling flush. And the big contributors to the Democratic National Committee, feted in Los Angeles, will be feeling flush, too. Through eight years, Clinton-Gore never let them down. But Gore still needs the votes of people who aren't feeling flush, who won't be renting sky suites in the Staples Center in Los Angeles. How have these people really been doing these last eight years?

Robert Pollin, a good economist at the University of Massachusetts, has an "Anatomy of Clintonomics" in the bimonthly periodical New Left Review for May/June of this year. It doesn't offer much comfort to those trying to run the "Gore is the friend of working people" flag up the pole.

Once again, it's the season of the Republican and Democratic national conventions, this time choreographed in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. Both events have been underwritten by business patrons; both cities are notorious for police misconduct. Hospitality and brutality -- the contrasts could hardly be more extreme.

In the City of Brotherly Love, the welcome mat was embossed with great riches. The Republican convention is brought to you by movers and shakers of Wall Street.

The Grand Old Party's jamboree ended up with a pricetag in excess of $50 million, mostly supplied via corporate donations. The same sort of financing is in the pipeline for the Democratic convention (estimated cost: $35 million) in the middle of August. The symmetry of the largess is breathtaking.

AUSTIN, Texas -- "He should be ashamed." So said Gov. George W. Bush after Vice President Al Gore pointed out that there are 1.4 million uninsured children in Texas.

Somebody should be ashamed. And now on to the topic du jour. It's like, duh. Just when you thought there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between the two parties, the Republicans go and prove you're wrong.

The R's have been on a tax-cutting spree, intoxicated by the prospect of huge surpluses. In tax stories, you always need to read the second paragraph, or the ninth, or wherever they've hidden the Catch-22. The trouble with TV news is that they never have time to get to the second paragraph.

Here's the second paragraph: In a truly startling class warfare assault, the R's have rigged every one of their recent tax adjustments to favor the rich. You might think that's no skin off your nose, but the less that rich people pay, the more of the tax burden has to be borne by you. Duh.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Thank goodness! Just in the nick of time, up shows the Proud of Texas Committee to "act as a resource on Texas facts for members of the media between now and the November election."

And look at the variety of citizens on this committee!

Mike Levy, publisher of Texas Monthly, two lobbyists, a state employee and a guy who sells cement to the state. And they have absolutely nothing in common, except they're all supporting George W. Bush! Thank heavens, objectivity at last.

The Proud of Texas Committee is concerned lest Texas "suffer damage from the kind of political firestorms that often are driven by national campaigns." Further, the group wants to "safeguard the state from the adverse effects of a political firestorm and base political expediency." Oh no, not base political expediency! Anything but that!

To this noble end, the Proud of Texas Committee has sent a letter to Vice President Al Gore really giving him what-for because "the home state of a presidential contender can suffer enormous damage as a result of inaccuracies and misrepresentations."

You can tell the Democrats are getting truly worried about Ralph Nader, the Green Party presidential candidate. It's only July, and already the attacks are getting shriller and sillier. But with Nader within sight of double digits in the polls in California, Oregon and Washington, and making an increasingly strong showing in the Rust Belt, Gore's supporters see desperate peril.

Asked about the threat that Nader would erode his own base and let Bush into the White House, vice president Gore was dismissive last weekend, simply telling reporters that he does not regard Nader as a threat. But behind this mien of strained nonchalance, Gore and his strategists are casting about for surrogates to intimidate potential defectors to Nader and to bully them back into the fold.

Early this summer, on the influential "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," a leading pundit sat in front of TV cameras and made the kind of broad pronouncement often favored by media commentators. "American politics is about optimism," Mark Shields declared. "Americans are the most optimistic people on the planet."

Uttered with great assurance, such statements are more than silly. They sound like descriptions but function as prescriptions. Claiming some extraordinary national trait -- in this case, depicting the USA as the global headquarters for hope -- these cheery proclamations end up instructing the public as to proper attitudes.

That's hardly surprising when we consider the sources. Shuttling between newsrooms and TV studios while earning hefty salaries, big-name journalists are fond of rosy windows on the world. Overall, the powerful politicians they cover have similar vantage points. And when large numbers of them gather together, the upbeat -- and facile -- rhetoric is thick.

AUSTIN, Texas -- We need to have a discussion about our culture. It's about the Pizza Hut ad on the space rocket. Does the word "tacky" occur to you?

The commercialization of absolutely everything has gone too far. I realize the Pizza Hut people paid $2.5 million for the ad space and the Russian government is slightly desperate, but -- Pizza Hut? Not that it would have been better if it had been some technology firm, but -- Pizza Hut?

Corporations put ads on fruit, ads all over the schools, ads on cars, ads on clothes. The only place you can't find ads is where they belong: on politicians.

I believe it was former state Ag Commish Jim Hightower who first suggested pols should dress like NASCAR drivers, covered with the patches of their corporate sponsors. G.W. Bush should be wearing an Enron gimme cap and an Exxon breast patch, and have Microsoft embroidered on one side of his shirt and assorted insurance companies on the other. Ditto Gore, with a slight change of sponsors. Very slight.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Ooops. A $610 million deficit in Texas' famously balanced budget just happened to G.W. Bush on his way to the White House.

Of all the things you know you shouldn't say in this world, is there any sweeter satisfaction than, "Told you so"? I'm also telling you this deficit is going to get a lot bigger.

As a Republican legislator remarked sourly several months ago, "I actually hope Bush loses just so he'll he have to be here to face the mess he's made."

Many and complicated are the ways of the Texas budget, and according to the state comptroller, we should get a $1 billion surplus out of state taxes, so the shortfall is covered for now. If the economy remains strong. If the desperately poor in our "soft-landing, slowing economy" so shrewdly planned by Fed chief Alan Greenspan don't decide to apply for the social services that they are entitled to.

The dirty little secret of Texas government is that the way we keep it solvent is by shorting the poor. We go to great pains NOT to let people who are qualified for Medicaid know they are qualified, and then we make it incredibly difficult for them to apply.

Welcome back to "Media Jeopardy!" Rest assured that there's never a shortage of fascinating material.

The rules are unchanged: Consider the answer, and then try to come up with the correct question. Let's get started!

Today's first category is "TV Follies."

• The Alliance for Better Campaigns found that television stations in the country's biggest 75 media markets, reaching about four-fifths of the population, aired 151,267 of these during the first four months of 2000.

What are political ads?

• According to researchers, at least this much money will end up being spent for this year's campaign TV commercials in the United States.

What is $600 million?

• During a single month at the height of the 2000 presidential primary season, the Annenberg Public Policy Center discovered, the evening news broadcasts on the nation's top three TV networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) devoted an average of this much time to "candidate-centered discourse" each night.

What are 36 seconds?

Now we're on to our next category, "Basics of News Media."

Lots of Democrats all over the country are a-twitter over Ralph Nader.

"Nader, Nader, what do we do about Nader? Of course, I agree with him; of course, he's right. But what about the court, what about Roe, what about the environment if Bush wins?"

I have a few modest suggestions that I think may help.

In the short term, support the heck out of Nader -- and I don't just mean progressives, either. Frankly, the Reform Party should nominate him instead of Pat Buchanan. Nader's an economic populist who doesn't much emphasize social issues, which I always thought was the original intent of Ross Perot and that party. Unlike most "liberals," Nader has lunch-bucket appeal. I know for a fact that at least one major union, in addition to the ones that have already endorsed him, is seriously thinking about endorsing Nader.