A thoughtful, balanced article now on the news stands:
"They've Got Personality"
Talk of the Town
New Yorker, Nov. 6, 2000 p. 37-38
(excerpt from print copy - no web version available)
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Bush' point of superiority, then, is in the matter of "personality," and it is striking how narrowly that word seems to have been defined for electoral purposes.
Personality apparently excludes, if not intelligence itself, then such manifestations of it as intellectual curiosity, analytic ability, and a capacity for original thought, all of which Gore has in abundance and Bush not only lacks but scorns. Personality apparently excludes courage, which Gore, at least in comparison with Bush, also possesses. Gore put himself in harm's way during the Vietnam War; Bush did not. And Gore showed political courage, to a modest but discernible degree, when as a senator he voted to support the Gulf War and engaged the question of strategic arms in a heterodox way that went beyond the well-meaning simplicities of the nuclear-freeze movement. When he did these things it was clear that he might be putting his national political future at risk Bush, as has been noted before in this space, has helped move the Republican Party away from antigovernment extremism and toward an acknowledgment of a degree of social responsibility. But these were obvious, and politically cost-free, moves in light of the collapse of the Gingrich revolution and the political and policy triumphs of Clintonism. Bush's main rival for the Republican nomination, John McCain, would actually have moved the Party further in the same direction.
"Personality" is the descendant of what used to be called, back in the old days two or three months ago,"character." And character has seemed to mean, first, a disinclination to embarrass the country through spectacularly foolish sexual indiscretions, and, second, credibility.
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Gore's tendency to embellish anecdotes, especially about himself, is real and undeniable. Even so, some of his alleged lies have turned out to be strongly rooted in factuality). He did not "create" the Internet, obviously; but he was one of a tiny handful of politicians who grasped its significance when it was in its infancy, and he did take the lead in writing legislation to spur its development. He and Tipper weren't the models for Oliver Barrett IV and Jennifer Cavilleri, in "Love Story,'' but the young Albert Gore, Jr., was, according to the novel's author, Erich Segal, one of two models for Ollie. (Tipper, who is feisty but not Italian-American, was not a model for Jenny.) Other errors of Gore's have been insignificant or superfluous, such as his anecdote about a girl who had no desk in her science class of thirty six students. It turned out that the desk shortage was limited to the day on which the photograph Gore saw was taken. The fact remains that a class of thirty-six is too large for effective teaching.
What gives the theme of Gore as liar its power is the cautionary example of Clinton's impeachable (if not convictable) falsehoods about the Monica Lewinsky episode; if it weren't for that, Gore's exaggerations, such as they are, might not even have been noticed, and there would almost certainly have been no attempt to paint him as a liar. Because of the Clinton factor, Gore's exaggerations are seen as a moral problem.
In the debates, Bush uttered inaccuracies that, unlike Gore's, falsify the underlying essence of his point--as, for example, when he said that Gore was outspending him in the campaign (when the reverse is true, to the tune of fifty million dollars) and that he fought to get a patients' bill of rights passed in Texas (when he actually vetoed one such bill and allowed another to become law without his signature), and that his health-care proposal would "have prescription drugs as an integral part of Medicare" (when this is precisely what Gore's plan would do, while Bush's would dismantle Medicare as we know it in favor of a system of subsidized private insurance).
But these untruths have generally been chalked up to ignorance, not mendacity. It's the same with Bush's boast that, guess what, Texas is going to put three of James Byrd's killers to death, when the actual number slated for execution in that case is two. It is generally agreed that Bush did not realize that he was exaggerating; he was just a little fuzzy on the math. So he was not "lying" (though some of his hearers felt a moral chill all the same).
Apart from the mostly specious matter of credibility, "personality" comes down to likability. And likability is not even a matter of opinion; it is a matter of taste. Hard as it may be to believe, there are people here and there on the planet Earth who actually like Al Gore, and there may even be one or two who wonder if George W. Bush might not be such a nice guy after all. Still, there's no denying that a large number of people find Gore irritating; to prove it, there are polls, to say nothing of the panels of "undecided voters"--that is, clueless, ill informed citizens who even at this late date cannot summon the mental energy to make up their minds--assembled by the television networks into on-camera focus groups.
Gore can be awkward and tone-deaf, and he sometimes has trouble modulating his presentation of himself and he plainly lacks the instinctive political exuberance of a Bill Clinton or even the slightly twitchy easygoingness of a George W. Bush. Gore is aggressive, assertive, and intensely energetic, qualities once counted as desirable in a potential President but now evidently seen by many as disturbing.
At a time of domestic prosperity and tranquillity, when the United States has few mortal enemies and none that are capable of presenting an existential threat, much of the public seems to have developed a thirst for passivity, a thirst that Bush is eager to slake. This may explain the paradox that while Gore was widely judged the substantive winner of all three of the candidates' televised debates, and certainly the first and third of them, he lost the battle in the postdebate media echo chambers and, perhaps partly as a result, in the opinion polls. In the final debate, Gore stretched the rules (within the bounds of civility, but still), while Bush complained and turned beseechingly to the moderator for help. To caricature them both, Gore was a smart bully, Bush a hapless tattletale. Neither attribute is attractive, but it may turn out that fear of the first will outweigh contempt for the second. In that case, "personality" will definitively have triumphed over "issues," and the transformation of the Presidency of the United States into the presidency of the student council will be complete.
-- Hendrick Hertzberg |
