Coattails

Dressing the candidates for success

by Robert Manning

Less than three months to go before Election Day 2000. Long months of having to listen to and look at the wooden-tongued orator from Tennessee and the Mixmaster syntax-twister from Texas. The prospect is daunting. But if the races for the presidency and for control of Congress are as close as now seems likely, we may be saved from ennui.

Now that the presidential and vice-presidential candidates have been chosen, attention can be spared for the struggle for Congress, a struggle some consider just as important as the presidential race. In the Senate, where Republicans currently hold a 54-to-46 edge, 33 seats are to be filled. At least 10 of those seats fall into the "toss-up" column, according to the authoritative journal Roll Call. The Democrats will need to win at least five of those seats and hold on to all they now occupy if they are to take the Senate out of the ultra-conservative grip of Trent Lott and his compass-less cohort. That is a formidable challenge.

The House of Representatives presents a different prospect -- one with better odds of Democratic success. Of the 435 seats, 222 are held by Republicans and 211 by Democrats (two are occupied by independents). Any combination of GOP losses and Democratic gains adding up to 12 would wrest the House from its present mean-spirited leadership.

The outcome depends in great part on the old coattails factor. Which presidential ticket will muster enough strength to bring its party's Senate and House candidates with it into the victory column? For advice on this matter I have turned to my friend Charlie Davidson, one of New England's most renowned haberdashers. His Andover Shop, near Harvard Square in Cambridge, makes clothes and provides accessories for clients from all over the United States. It may seem strange to some that I turn to a cloak-and-suit man for political guidance. But Charlie is no simple haberdasher. He learned about tailoring from the great-grandson of a tailor from Minsk who fashioned tailcoats for such notables as Czar Alexander, Otto von Bismarck, and Georges Clemenceau. And he learned his politics in Massachusetts, breeding ground of presidents, famous senators, and Speakers of the House of Representatives.

"The traditional coattails are no longer acceptable," says Charlie, referring to the heavy dark wool tails worn by cartoon-strip senators, or the likes of William Jennings Bryan after he became famous as the "Boy Orator of the Platte" (a fitting description, said one of Bryan's critics, "since the Platte River is a mile wide and only six inches deep at the mouth"). "And a single set of tails is no longer sufficient in this pluralistic time," Charlie adds. "The well-accoutered candidate supplies himself with more than one set, for use depending on the occasion."

For George W. Bush's basic set of coattails, Charlie recommends blue denim to match the cowboy hat and shit-kicker boots he wears at home. For the effete East, Bush should wear something in Yale-blue silk or Mongolian cashmere, and for the so-called industrial-heartland states (probably the most crucial for both candidates this year), he'll want a more plebeian set with an oversize union label showing and small bulbs that flash on whenever he commits a grammatical or vocabulary gaffe -- "just to keep the boobs laughing," says Charlie.

Al Gore is an easy fit. For everyday use, the choice should be chino in the earth tones his sartorial advisers now recommend. Chino wrinkles easily, Charlie concedes, but it is the standard cloth for any Harvard man, as it was for the undergraduate Gore when he bought his chino trousers at Charlie's shop. The vice-president might want to dress them up with the "Fight Fiercely!" slogan that is standard at Harvard football games and matches perfectly with Gore's usual rhetoric. This should be affixed with buttons or velcro so that it can be removed when he campaigns in his native South or in the neighborhood of state or community colleges. A stand-by set made of military twill might helpfully suggest that Gore's service as a military correspondent in Vietnam took him closer to combat than did Bush's stint in the Texas Air National Guard.

Charlie did not find it easy to fashion coattails for the vice-presidential nominees, Dick Cheney being so colorless and Joseph Lieberman so centrist as to defy simple characterization. He finally settled on a print of fluorescent oil rigs to represent Cheney's huge stock options and the seventh of the Ten Commandments to accentuate Lieberman's impassioned renunciation of President Clinton's "immorality."

In the hope of getting orders from each political camp, Charlie has also designed special fundraising tails for each candidate. The Bush tails are black, adorned with two-inch-high dollar signs in gold. (An optional inscription on the lapel, salvaged from a past Bush campaign, reads READ MY LIPS.) For the fun-loving Gore he has fashioned a slightly subtler set of money-green linen, inscribed with golden images of the Japanese yen, the Chinese yuan, the Korean won, or the currency of any other heavily Buddhist country the candidate might prefer. The beauty part is that each set is reversible, and on the other side is emblazoned in neon letters I'M FOR CAMPAIGN-FINANCE REFORM!

Charlie amused himself with yet another design, a uni-candidate set of brilliant red forked tails. "I like the looks of them," he says, "but I don't think they'll sell."

A version of this column appeared on www.politicalwag.com.