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THE OBSERVATORY E2K November 6, 1999 |
| The "front-loaded" 2000 primary schedule made for an absurdly early start to the presidential campaign. This article, originally written for a local Democratic newsletter, looked at the post positions from a year out. It was the first item posted on the testbed version of The Observatory; looking back from February, as I revamp the site, it stands up fairly well. |
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The first presidential election of the
third millennium is now less than a year away. Yes, I know that technically the millennial
change is in 2001, but social convention has pegged it to the odometer change in 2000 --
and anyway, the fifth-century monk who invented our dating system miscalculated to begin
with. It should also be absurd to speak of any election as "just" a year away,
but almost everything about our system for electing presidents is absurd. Half the Republican contenders have been knocked out of the race before a single ballot was cast, not that any of the dropouts are a great loss to the Republic -- though Pat Buchanan might provide an ironic service by siphoning right-wing votes from the GOP. Of the Republican survivors, several are frivolous. (What on Earth was Orrin Hatch thinking?) Forbes is frivolous but rich. For that matter, George W. Bush would be frivolous if he didn't have a famous name and a lot of rich friends. As I write this, the latest tempest in the Bush teapot is his 25 percent score on a pop quiz of foreign leaders' names, posed to him by a local TV reporter. In itself, his low score means hardly anything -- I would have scored a zero. But the very fact that the questions were asked points to the lurking and growing suspicion that "Dubya" just plain doesn't know very much. No one would have put that quiz to either Democrat, or to John McCain, because all are known to be serious people. Bush is a candidate who makes you miss the intellectual gravitas of Dan Quayle. (Like other Democrats I've talked to, I am in the odd position of hoping that McCain pulls Bush down some, but not enough to lose the nomination -- if we had to have a Republican president, I'd much rather have McCain, but he'd also be a much tougher opponent next November.) Enough of the Republicans. Let's turn to the two Democrats. The underlying good news is that both are good, serious candidates. I could vote for either one in good conscience. That said, I'll wade in up front and admit -- in spite of current media spin -- I have more confidence in Gore for the tough going. On policy grounds, there is not really much to choose between them. Gore has criticized Bradley at times for being too liberal and at times for being not a very good Democrat. Both charges are typical campaign blather. It is also campaign blather for Bradley to proclaim vague Big Ideas without explaining how he'll get them passed. In fact, the most bothersome thing Bradley has done is to announce an (otherwise admirable) health care program without any hint of how he would get it through -- and when he was nowhere to be found during the hard-fought 1994 health care debate. A theme of the Observatory column through the years I've been writing it is that politics is no game for saints. We Democrats have an unhappy tradition of nominating good, decent candidates -- from Stephenson to Dukakis -- who went down to defeat against Republican knife fighters. Whatever Bill Clinton's failings in the saintliness department, he's shown himself to be a knife fighter; the GOP has been bleeding from him for seven years now. Gore has shown he can be a knife fighter; you don't survive as a progressive in Southern politics unless you are. If Bradley is going to win my confidence as a potential nominee facing the ruthless Republican machine next year, he will have to show me that he knows how to be a knife fighter, too. -- Rick Robinson |
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