6.08.00
What’s Wrong with the Gore Ads?

6.01.00
The Unbearable Lightness of Being W.

5.30.00
Cold Beer, (Not) Here!

5.22.00
One China's Glorious Day

5.18.00
The New Patriotism

5.15.00
Boxing Out Gore

5.08.00
McCain Endorses — But How Fervently?

5.08.00
Gilligan’s Folly

5.05.00
You Gotta Have "It"

5.02.00
The "Conservative" Gore

5.01.00
A Stray Thot

es, Al Gore’s new ad barrage highlights the essential falsity of his foolish pose as the Democratic McCain from a couple of months ago. Yes, the ads — and just about everything Gore does — add to the plausibility of the Bush charge that he “will do anything to win.” But, even so, most of the criticisms of the ads in the press are ridiculous, and running them is probably a smart strategic choice by the Gore campaign.

A CBS reporter intoned last night, in a segment about the ads, that “everyone agrees [the campaign-finance] system is corrupting politics.” Everyone? The ads are supposedly an offense against democracy because they are paid for with — gasp! — soft money by — No! No! No! — a political party. How sinister.

One of the reasons soft money is considered scandalous is that so much of it is going to be spent this year. But of all the uses to which the fruits of the American economy can be put — name your luxury — paying for political ads that try to move the American public on a boring, but important policy issue like prescription drugs should be very high on the list. All those goo-goo handwringers who worry about “the vanishing voter” should be hailing soft-money donors as paragons of public spiritedness.

Then, there is the matter of these “issue ads” promoting the candidacy of Al Gore. They surely do. But they don’t do so “expressly,” in a way that runs afoul of the campaign rules devised by the courts. Those rules may seem arbitrary and not far-reaching enough, but that is because the courts want to give the broadest possible running room for exactly the kind of activity the First Amendment is supposed to protect — political ads run by a political party in the midst of a political campaign.

These questions aside, pundits say it’s a mistake for Gore to break his pledge not to run soft-money ads until the Republicans went first. But if there is one thing we learned from the McCain campaign, it’s that it is stupid for a candidate to make ad pledges that will keep him from vigorously engaging his opponent. The public just doesn’t care about picayune promises about process. The only thing dumber than Gore making his pledge would have been sticking to it.

So, now the voters will get a strong dose of Democratic rhetoric on prescription drugs. The Republicans will counter sometime soon, and the American people will eventually decide between the two. Campaign reformers are scandalized. They should get over it — it’s called democracy.

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