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Here is the awful truth that Al Gore and his handlers must contemplate as, once again, the pundits and the public transform a lopsided debate triumph for the vice-president into something of a moral victory for the overmatched, underprepared George W. Bush: maybe, after eight years on the national stage, people just don't like him. How Gore blew it
The veep destroys Bush once again. But after eight years in office, it seems, too many people just don't like him.
by Dan Kennedy
From where I was sitting, the third debate was much like the first. Gore absolutely annihilated Bush on his command of the issues. During the last half-hour, in particular, the Texas governor looked and sounded exhausted, cranky, and entirely out of his element. Yes, the commentators noticed, and even gave Gore points for seeming less obnoxious than he did in Boston. "A lifetime -- surely a campaign season -- of coasting, not enough of that fancy book-learnin', came back and took a Texas-size chomp from his Lone Star ass," wrote Salon's Jake Tapper of Bush's embarrassing performance.
Yet, just as with the first debate, Bush got from the public what he couldn't get during 90 minutes in St. Louis: respect. CBS News scored it narrowly for Gore, 45 percent to 40 percent - hardly enough to change anyone's mind. ABC News's poll respondents actually called it a dead heat, 41 percent to 41 percent.
The most fascinating poll, though, was the CNN/USA Today/Gallup survey, which showed Gore winning by a razor-thin 46 percent to 44 percent margin, but which also revealed Bush to be a big winner on just about all of the important questions lurking beneath. For instance, debate-watchers thought Bush was more likable by a 60 percent to 31 percent margin. Bush agreed more on issues respondents cared about, 51 percent to 45 percent. Bush was more believable, 52 percent to 41 percent. Bush was more in touch with the average voter, 47 percent to 45 percent.
Gore did beat Bush by a 57 percent to 33 percent margin on the matter of who expressed himself more clearly. But you can be sure the Gore camp knows as well as anyone that a candidate who is perceived merely as more articulate is not going to beat someone who is seen as more likable and more believable.
Such numbers have to be discouraging for Gore. Time and again Tuesday night, I thought he manhandled Bush, who came off as utterly unprepared to be president. In a pre-debate appearance on MSNBC, former Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis vigorously -- almost angrily -- blamed the media for turning Gore's first-debate victory into a defeat. And now it's going to happen again. But though Dukakis was right generally, he was wrong on the specifics: the media haven't shaped public opinion so much as they've followed it, elevating the complaints of those moronic undecided voters about Gore's sighs, for instance, as though they were folk wisdom rather than the useless natterings of people too ill-informed to make up their minds (see "Don't Quote Me," News and Features, October 5).
Bush's lows Wednesday night were almost too embarrassing to be believed. Here's what I thought was the lowest. For months, Bush and running mate Dick Cheney have been hammering away at the Clinton-Gore administration's supposed neglect of the military. During the debate, Gore pointed out that he wants $100 billion in new military spending, whereas Bush wants "only" $45 billion. (Paging Ralph Nader!) In other words, Gore had just exposed Bush as a fraud on his signature issue -- yet Bush's only response was a lame retort that, Yep, you bet Gore's gonna make the federal government bigger. Me? Not gonna.
To be sure, Gore still hasn't come close to mastering Bill Clinton's trick of pandering without seeming to. In the town-hall setting, Gore's desperate urge to close the sale seemed almost comic at times, as when he tried to reassure a family farmer ("You guys have been having a hard time, and I want to fight for you"), and when he ticked off what seemed like a 37-point checklist of tax breaks and credits for the benefit of a single, childless woman. I wouldn't have been surprised if Gore had actually jumped into the crowd and begged.
Maybe what it comes down to is this. The public clearly sees that Gore is smarter and better informed than Bush. But they're not looking to see whether Bush is a genius, but, rather whether - as WTKK Radio talk-show host and MSNBC.com contributor Jay Severin has observed -- he meets the minimum intellectual qualifications to be president. (I don't think he has, but never mind.) Assuming he's met that threshold, undecided voters then move on to other things: do they like him better? Do they prefer his overall approach? And here's where Bush seems to be doing pretty well. The Washington Post's David Broder wrote that the candidates themselves have cast this campaign as one of "the fighter" versus "the healer." Given Gore's aggressive demeanor, the vice-president really had no choice; but it's pretty obvious that most people will opt for conciliation over conflict.
"Mr. Gore seems to see America as a place fragmented into special interests, a place where the first priority of government is not to protect individual liberties but to divide the plunder among favored factions," wrote Claudia Rosett on Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com.
Unfortunately for Gore, that sounds about right. He probably thinks he's about to get punished for the sins of Bill Clinton. He's wrong. The trouble with Gore is that he's not Clinton. Clinton, for all his faults and personal venality, could have tied up Gore's issues into a gauzy, optimistic whole, using his rhetorical skills to articulate a vision for the country.
Gore has succeeded brilliantly in showing that Bush is either too stupid or intellectually incurious to be president. But in doing so, he has committed a cardinal sin of politics: he has turned the campaign into a referendum on his opponent, rather than on his own ideas and vision.
Dan Kennedy's work can be accessed from his Web site: http://www.dankennedy.net
Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy@phx.com
Articles from July 24, 1997 & before can be accessed here