-Caveat Lector-
from:
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Click Here: <A
HREF="http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/et?ac=003760719202316&rtmo=fsr0DoMs&atmo=r
rrrrrrq&pg=/et/00/11/5/wpres405.html">Survival of the thickest</A>
-----
Survival of the thickest
By Mark Steyn
Hopes for Gore fade as tactics backfire
GEORGE Dubya isn't the only candidate whose wild and reck-less youth was
exhumed this week. On Wednesday's edition of her talk show, the rapper Queen
Latifah asked her guest, Al Gore, about his "college drinking" days and
invited him to give us a "peek at your wild side".
Well, said Al, with what passes for a roguish twinkle, he used to have a
motorcycle back in college, and one day he and three others got on it and
rode off on a double date. At some point, the crazy, uninhibited biker boy
noticed the police behind him. "There was a blue light and I can't say for
sure that they were coming after us," he said, "but just on the chance that
they were, we cut through an alley."
Hmm. On the face of it, this would seem to be far more serious than Dubya
being pulled over for driving too slowly a mile away from his parents' home
in Kennebunkport on Labour Day 1976. In this instance, Al was flying through
the crowded streets of Boston on an overloaded motorbike with three
passengers hanging on before ducking into an alley to shake off the cops.
Surely this irresponsible behaviour raises serious questions about Al Gore's
fitness to be president.
But everyone I've spoken to just laughs. Most don't believe that Al tried to
lose the pigs, or cut through the alley, or had four people on the bike. A
quarter refused to believe that he had ever owned a motorbike. Only one guy -
my friend Bob - was prepared to sign on to every aspect of Al's unusually
vivid anecdote.
Conversely, Dubya's conviction for OUI (Operating Under the Influence), which
is indisputably true, elicited an emphatic shrug from my highly unscientific
sample. The Bush supporters figured that it was a last-minute dirty trick by
the Democrats. The Gore supporters indignantly denied this, but about half of
them figured that their man was going to get stiffed with the blame anyway.
Three Democrats advanced the theory that Bush had leaked the drink-driving
conviction to make the Gore guys look bad. Carol said: "This is typical of
the stuff they pull. It's that 'I'm so human' thing he does again. Like
looking stupid."
For a dope and a drunk, Bush has proved an amazingly resilient candidate,
and, if (as seems likely) he survives this latest onslaught to triumph on
Tuesday, his handling of this "November surprise" will help illustrate why.
He did not wag his finger and say: "I did not have alcoholic relations with
that beer, Mr Budweiser." He did not explicitly deny the allegations until
the gal in the passenger seat gave a dress with a vomit stain on it to the
FBI crime lab.
Back in '76 in Kennebunkport, he didn't do what the bratty sons from the big
house do in small towns all over this continent: get dad to lean on the
police chief. That's the way the Kennedys handle things. But Dubya paid his
fine, had his licence in Maine suspended, and 24 years later the boys on the
bus had a hard job keeping the story going through the initial press
conference. Did he spend the night in jail? No. Was there an accident? No.
How many beers did he have? Several. "Several" would be more than two?
Never underestimate the capacity of the US media to bore any story into the
ground. Another three minutes and they'd have been down to asking: Draft or
bottled? Budweiser or Sam Adams? Or some filthy Canadian swill like Molson?
That could cost him with American brewery workers concentrated in the key
swing state of Wisconsin, whose electoral votes could prove critical in a
close election. As the old song says, What Made Milwaukee Famous Made a Loser
Out of Me. Instead, Bush looks set to vindicate the first rule of
presidential politics: the guy who's higher on Labour Day always wins. The
only difference is that this time round it's the guy who's higher on Labour
Day 1976.
Democrats' gleeful briefings at the end of this week provide an insight into
their problems: they point out that, in September 1976, while George Dubya
was boozing it up, Al Gore was running in his first congressional campaign in
Tennessee. They seem to think that this is a plus for their man, rather than
merely reinforcing the impression that, as Dubya says, Gore is "of, by and
for Washington".
The founders of the republic, having thrown off a permanent governing class
in the form of the Royal house, foresaw a nation of citizen legislators - men
who left their farms and log cabins, journeyed to the capital, tried their
hand at government, and then returned to their crops and livestock.
It's certainly arguable that Dubya is not quite what they had in mind - a guy
who has spent most of his life sprawled across the floor of his log cabin,
face down in the still. By "irresponsible youth", he seems to mean anything
up to late middle age. None the less, he fits the mould of recent Republican
presidents, men who have a whole other career before going into politics:
Dwight Eisenhower, soldier; Ronald Reagan, actor; George W Bush, goofball.
Dubya is a kind of debauched boomer variation on the Founders' ideal: the guy
who jerks around till his mid-40s, sobers up and takes responsibility. It's
clear that his failings have given him a certain humility, and his humility
has proved his trump card against Al Gore's absurd vanity. When he talked in
the second debate about an America that was "strong but humble", he was,
consciously or otherwise, talking about himself and implicitly drawing a
contrast with the puffed-up bully on the other side of the stage.
That's also his approach to governing. On a radio show on Friday, one caller
said: "Okay, he hasn't had a drink in 14 years, but being president's a very
stressful job and he's got this timebomb ticking away inside him. What if he
starts drinking again?"
At this juncture, it might be helpful to review Dubya's schedule as Governor
of Texas, the second biggest state in the Union: according to Texas Monthly,
he gets to his office in Austin at 8.30am and stays till 5.30pm. He "takes
private time from 11.40am to 1.30pm, when he runs three to five miles at the
University of Texas track at a pace of seven-and-a-half minutes a mile, and
afterwards might play a little video golf or computer solitaire until 3pm . .
." A gruelling nine-hour day, with two hours off for personal fitness and 90
minutes for computer games: how this man copes with the pressure, God only
knows.
Bush seems set to maintain this onerous burden in office, which is great
news. Ronald Reagan took naps every afternoon and brought down the Soviet
Union. Conversely, the smartest guys - Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter - have
been the most disastrous presidents. Clinton is also frighteningly smart,
which is why the world should fall on its knees and thank heaven that Monica
fell on hers.
If the Clinton era has been a success, it's because his sex drive and its
attendant legal difficulties took up the time that otherwise would have gone
to pursuing his natural Carto-Wilsonian inclinations. Gore, unfortunately,
has the insane intellectual certainty of Carter and Wilson without the
mitigating distractions of Clinton. As to his self-evident superiority to
Bush, the best indicator of how effective his mighty brain would be in
government is his pitiful election campaign.
You should also judge a man, as Dubya likes to say, by the company he keeps.
On the campaign trail, Al turns up with tired old hacks such as Jesse
Jackson. Bush's campaign stops, on the other hand, suggest a heavyweight
cabinet: Dick Cheney, Colin Powell at the State Department, Condoleeza Rice
at National Security, Don Marron of PaineWebber at the Treasury, Senator Dick
Lugar at Defence . . .
If some of those names sound like a reunion class of the First Bush
Administration, it's worth remembering that yesterday's men are running on
tomorrow's platform. For a moron, Dubya has put together some bold policies -
a partially privatised social security system, parental choice in public
education, tort reform, missile defence.
Bush, sneer the snooty twerps from American journalism school, lacks
"intellectual curiosity". But Gore lacks any curiosity: aside from
homosexuals in the military and gun licensing, he seems to think that no one
has had a good idea on any important issue since the 1930s; he wants to put
Roosevelt era programmes into his famous "lockbox" and preserve them for all
eternity.
It seems unlikely that he'll get the chance. But if Dubya does go down in
flames on Tuesday, it won't be the end of the world for him. He'll be back in
Austin, ready for his lunchtime run and video golf, a man at ease with
himself and life's vicissitudes.
Albert Gore Jnr, on the other hand, will have failed the only task for which,
according to some evidence, Senator and Mrs Albert Gore Snr conceived him. If
Senator Gore had raised his son as George Bush Snr did and let the guy kick
loose a little back in the 1970s, maybe Al wouldn't be in such trouble now.
Final score? Bush 50 per cent, Gore 45 per cent, Nader three per cent,
Buchanan one per cent, others one per cent.
� Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2000.
-----
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