10/19/00 3:30 p.m.
Staking a Claim
Gore's post-debate strategy of wish fulfillment.

By NR's John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru

he Gore campaign's announcement that it wants to buy air time on cable channels in swing states for re-broadcasting the third presidential debate has a target audience: the media. In a concerted effort to win the second-day spin, Team Gore is asserting, as forcefully as possible, that their man cleaned up on Tuesday night.

The snap polls of viewers, of course, showed no such thing: ABC News had it tied, 41 percent apiece; CNN/USA Today called it a near draw, with Gore at 46 percent and Bush at 44 percent (but with respondents considering Bush more likable, more believable, and fairer than Gore by a longshot); only CBS News's survey gave Gore a clear edge, 45 percent to 40 percent.

But if Gore learned anything following the first debate, it's that the perceived winner sometimes loses when the spin turns against him a day or two later. Right now, Gore desperately needs a comeback story. Based on his debate performance, he won't get it — at least not without substantial cooperation from the media. Floating this cable-channel idea is Gore's way of helping the media tell this story. The New York Times today describes his campaign as "buoyant" in a headline, and Katharine Q. Seelye gushes in her lead: "Sensing that Vice President Gore's debate performance on Tuesday night has revived his candidacy…" And so on.

Or course, we have yet to see whether any of this ad time is actually purchased, what channels show the debate, and what time slots they're in. A 3:00 a.m. slot on the Animal Planet channel in Peoria, Ill., shouldn't count. But maybe it will, if it prompts the media to revive Gore's candidacy.

Debates & Double Standards
After untold eons in the news business, Al Hunt has finally uncovered media bias. Of course, it's against Al Gore. Hunt's column in the Wall Street Journal takes up the Gore campaign's complaint that it's being held to a higher standard of veracity than the Bush campaign is. Actually, this is Hunt's third pass at the issue, a previous column having been devoted to the argument that Gore lies no more often or egregiously than the average politician and another to portraying Bush as lying about his tax-cut plan.

It would be reasonable to hold Gore to a higher standard for truth-telling, since he is (at the least) suspected of having difficulty with it. (When you're worried that someone you know has a drinking problem, you tend to monitor his drinking more closely.) But Hunt doesn't establish that Gore is being held to a higher standard.

1. Bush is "duplicitous" in saying that he brought Republicans and Democrats together to pass an HMO bill, Hunt charges, since he was really dragged into signing it. Fair enough. But the point has often been made in the media. Among the news outlets that have called Bush on his statements: the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Baltimore Sun, the Orlando Sentinel, Business Week, and National Review.

2. Hunt: "The Texas governor claims the bulk of his tax cuts would go to 'the people at the bottom of the economic ladder'; that the percentage of kids without health insurance has dropped in Texas since he has been governor but risen nationally under the Clinton-Gore administration; or that the state of Texas spends $4.7 billion a year on health care for kids. Wrong on all counts."

It's Hunt who's wrong on all counts.

a) Bush's claim is that the working poor would receive the largest percentage reductions in their tax bill from his plan, and he's correct.

b) Bush's remark concerned health-insurance rates for people generally, not just children. By one Census Bureau measure, Bush was wrong about Texas: The percentage of Texans without insurance rose from 23.5 in 1995 to 24.1 in 1999. The Gore campaign has argued that the nationwise numbers have improved in the last two years, which is true but doesn't contradict Bush.

c) Bush's comment was that "we spend $4.7 billion on the uninsured in the state of Texas." Gore partisans bitterly complain that this number includes charitable care provided by doctors, local governments, and free clinics. So what? Bush didn't say that he was referring solely to spending by the state government. The Gore campaign seems to think that if the central government isn't doing something, it isn't happening.

3) Hunt says that Bush's astonishing assertion that he supported the early-80s intervention in Lebanon hasn't been adequately scrutinized. The Lebanon intervention was a fiasco. But Bush was making a statement of opinion, not of fact; it was in no way comparable to Gore's lies.

4) Hunt critizies the press for taking Bill Bennett's criticism of Joe Lieberman seriously when he is "a Republican functionary" and "political hit man." Well, maybe Hunt has a point here. But the fact that Bennett initially greeted Lieberman's selection by Gore positively undermines his case.

5) The press reports the charge of former senator Alan Simpson, a Republican, that Gore was selling his vote on the Gulf War to whichever side would give him more speaking time on the Senate floor. Simpson says that former senator George Mitchell, a Democrat, will back him up. In fact, Mitchell denies the story. But Mitchell's remark merely disproves an ancillary charge. Hunt gives us no reason to think that Mitchell is telling the truth and Simpson is lying about Gore's conduct, rather than the reverse.

Sorry, Al. Better luck next column.

On the Site
A new Gore lie!…and a report from the trail.