■ Bill Clinton gave the headline writers and pundits a new angle when he picked Al Gore as his runningmate: “Good OF Boys,” was the frontpage headline on the New York Daily News. . . . David Broder of the Washington Post pooh-poohed the need for a “balanced ticket”: the fact that Tennessee and Arkansas are neighbors, he said, is merely a “geographical oddity.” . . . Gore—who was raised mostly in Washington, D.C., during his father’s long tenure as senator and who is not known as a backwoodsman— demonstrated his down-home roots by attending an outdoor church meeting in Carthage, Tenn., at which he prayed for atheists, and hoped they wouldn’t get mad at him for praying. . . . Many commentators were happy to see the youthfulness of the ticket as “nothing less than the rejuvenation of the Democratic Party,” as R. W. Apple Jr. put it in the New York Times, designed to “banish the crippling image of the Democrats as a tired collection of squabbling special-interest groups.” … To columnist Earl Caldwell, it meant that the party which had its base in the power of big labor and minorities is gone: “The new Democrats are young, white, and middle class.” . . . Jesse Jackson’s initial reaction to the choice was oracular disdain: “It takes two wings to fly, and here you have two of the same wing.” But by the time he reached the convention floor he was talking meekly of “President Bill Clinton.”
■ President Clinton has a ways to go before his inauguration, though recent polls show him taking back the second slot from Ross Perot. In ABC/Washington Post poll taken on eve of the Convention, still-President Bush was leading with 33 per cent, to 30 per cent each for Clinton and Perot. CBS/ New York Times poll taken at same time showed Bush with 33, to 30 for Clinton, and 25 for Perot; in two-way race, it showed Bush and Clinton tied 43 to 43. . . . Bush faces dissension in his own ranks: “I consider Mr. Brady and Mr. Darman liabilities to the President,” complained Ernest Angelo, Texas representative on the Republican National Committee. . . . Massachusetts Governor William Weld, of the Paul Tsongas wing of the Republican Party (tight money, loose morals), is said to be jockeying for an important speaking slot at Republican Convention in Houston. Boston Herald columnist Don Feder comments: “Might as well turn the podium over to the National Abortion Rights Action League and Queer Nation.” . . . Although DNC chairman Ron Brown and New York Mayor David Dinkins found Perot “insensitive” and “offensive” in his speech to the NAACP, Perot has enlisted Rev. Calvin Butts for an active role in his campaign. Butts is heir to Adam Clayton Powell Jr. at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem and the most influential black clergyman in New York.
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