Dick Morris, The New York Post
DUI = GORE'S LOST WEEKEND
Monday,November 6,2000
AS he struggles in the last days before the election to make up a 3 to 5 percentage-point Bush lead, Al Gore finds he can't get a word in edgewise. Over every dinner table, kitchen counter, coffee table and bar in America, there is one and only one subject of conversation: Bush's DUI.
Is anyone asking if George W. Bush will zap Medicare? No. Do families worriedly discuss if Bush has the intelligence to hold the high office of president? Nope.
Are people wondering if the Republican will rape Social Security? Nobody's mentioning it.
The DUI scandal is all anyone is talking about. It has taken the microphone out of Gore's hands at the crucial last minute. While Gore hammers away at his message, pounding Bush every day on his issues, we see his lips moving, but we don't hear the sound.
All we want, as we gather around our TV sets, is to hear how the DUI issue is playing.
Unfortunately for Gore, it's not doing him much good. Gallup reports that 87 percent say it has no effect on how they'll vote. In the online Vote.com survey of over 100,000 voters, 91 percent say the same.
Every major poll still shows Bush ahead. The DUI is a dud. And Gore can't get any other message out.
He has only his own operatives and thugs to blame for taking away any chance he had to close the gap in these waning days.
Anyone who doesn't believe that Gore's people were behind the substance and the timing of this revelation doesn't know anything about American politics. This stink bomb did not explode by spontaneous combustion.
Doubtless what happened was that Gore's operatives dug it up early on, then fed the information to the Democratic judge who used his official position to ask for the files which would otherwise not be accessible to the public.
The judge asked for this information four months ago. Did Gore's immature attack dog Chris Lehane, who hails from Maine and runs in these circles in his hometown of Kennebunkport, play a key role?
However it came out, Bush has benefited. Gore's handlers should have had more confidence in their candidate. Without being drowned out by his own negative campaigners, Gore could have used this weekend to sell a message. Instead, his campaign chose to peddle a scandal. But it didn't work.
In 1992, the Democrats used a last-minute tactic to reverse a surge that had pushed President Bush past Clinton in the Democrat's internal tracking polls on the Thursday and Friday before the election: Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh announced, right before the election, that he would indict Defense Secretary Cap Weinberger in the Iran-Contra scandal. The announcement animated Clinton's comeback over the final weekend.
In 2000, the Democrats tried a similar dirty trick, but it looks like it will not have been enough to derail this George Bush.
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