5.05.00
You Can Call Me Al Gone

5.03.00
Voices Carry

5.01.00
Double Vision

4.28.00
A Message From You, Rudy

4.27.00
Gore Keeps Getting Clintoned

4.25.00
Can I Get A Witness?

4.24.00
Freeze Frame

4.19.00
Getting Away With It

4.17.00
Everyday I Write the Book...

4.14.00
Living Through Another Cuba

4.12.00
Killing In The Name Of...

4.10.00
Broadway Blues

4.07.00
Conservatism Go Boom?

4.05.00
Begala's Baby-Boomer Blues

4.03.00
Hagel-ian Logic: Bush's Ideal V.P.

3.31.00
Back Stabbin' Games People Play

3.29.00
The Ink Is Black, The Page Is White

3.27.00
Pleased to Meet You

3.23.00
Diallo II?

he truly surprising aspect of Campaign 2000 so far is that George W. Bush is so far ahead of Al Gore. By this, we don't mean so much in the polls — he is, but these things fluctuate. No, considering that he is succeeding Bill Clinton, it is remarkable that Gore ceded so much ground to Bush in the "narrative" game.

Almost any politician would pale in comparison to Bill Clinton in terms of communicating feeling and sentiment. It drives policy wonks nuts, because it is vitally different from communicating ideas. However, in the current political climate, the ability to convey empathy and sentiment is nonetheless essential. When the campaign began, the front-runners were clearly lacking in this regard. Gore-the-robot has been a cliché for close to a dozen years now (going back to his '88 effort — when, surprisingly, he was more genuine than he is now). George W.'s talent for linguistic meltdown — even in light of his father's malapropisms — became legendary. Orders for No-Doze spiked across the country.

But then something odd happened. By putting forward ideas and reasonable policies that Al Gore can only refer to as "risky," George W. Bush is on the rhetorical verge of casting himself as the candidate of the future.

Consider these campaign themes: "Morning In America," "Kinder and Gentler," "Courage to Change," "Bridge To The Future." They refer, respectively to Reagan' 84, Bush '88, Clinton '92 and Clinton '96. In their own way, they each speak to a sense of optimism and a movement forward. Clinton, of course, was even more explicit with the use of Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)" as the campaign anthem (even dumping the six-decades-old Democratic theme song, "Happy Days Are Here Again," at the '92 convention).

Clinton, like Reagan (please don't attack this writer for the previous clause), recognized that Americans are optimists. Regardless of how tough things are today, they believe in the future.

Which is why Al Gore's campaign is nothing short of bizarre. For a de facto incumbent, he is running a remarkably pessimistic effort. Every proposal that George W. Bush puts forward, Gore deems "risky." It is Gore who is focusing more on the past than on the future. Two weeks ago, the vice president addressed a New York business group. Fully half of the text was devoted to an economic lecture on "how we got to where we are today." Aside from being a rather obnoxious and dry treatise to give to a bunch of business leaders early in the morning, the text was odd in being so grounded in where the country has been. Gore then carped about how awful the "Bush-Quayle" years were and how we dare not go back to those days of huge deficits.

There are two serious problems with this line of attack. For one thing, Gore has fallen into the trap of fighting the last war. His handlers must have told him that the "risky tax scheme" rhetoric worked so well last time against Bob Dole and Jack Kemp, why not try it again? Well, it worked perfectly for Al Gore in '96, because Gore was the vice-presidential candidate. V.P.'s are supposed to be the attack dog on the other party's nominees. This allows the presidential candidate to speak on broader above-the-fray themes. Gore thrived in his role — in both Clinton campaigns as well as in the defenestration of Ross Perot in the "Larry King" NAFTA debate. But he's not running for vice president now, and he shouldn’t be acting as if he were. In fact, in his breakfast speech, Gore's body language got noticeably more animated the more partisan he became.

Gore's more fundamental problem is that he is misreading the impact of the economic good times for which he can, in some small respect, take credit. People are more likely to embrace "risk" when the economy is good than when it is bad. Why are lawyers quitting big white-shoe law firms across the country to start dot-coms? Why are people jumping from job to job with wild abandon? Because there doesn't, on balance, seem to be that much risk when unemployment is at near-zero.

In 1996, Bob Dole was the candidate offering a rhetorical "bridge to the past." Today, the cumulative impact of Gore's rhetoric is of a leader who wishes to freeze his country in one static moment — instead of using the opportunities of the moment to go the next step. And given the legacy Bill Clinton has left him, that is a pretty awkward moment to be stuck in.

On the other hand, if America can't be "risky" now, when can it? And is it really "risky" when there is so much flexibility, because the country is flush with cash? Given this environment, George W.'s policy prescriptions — tax reduction, educational accountability, and Social Security reform — can be seen by the public as entirely reasonable "risks."

Admittedly, George Bush the elder did not fully flesh out his themes until the convention rolled around. But right now, Dubya seems to have the narrative that matches where the nation is, while Al seems to be still grasping around for his script.

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