-Caveat Lector-
October 15, 2000
LIBERTIES
As the World Churns
By MAUREEN DOWD
We were sleepwalking toward the election, not loving our choices,
but not really too worried, with the country on palmy automatic
pilot. Suddenly, three weeks out from a new president, the Middle
East blows up and the markets tank.
With talk about war and terrorism and retaliatory bombing, and
heartbreaking pictures of mangled American sailors and mutilated
Israeli soldiers, with F.B.I. agents investigating in Yemen, the
election seems more consequential and the issues more complicated
than merely which side will offer better drug insurance for older
Americans.
Going from cruise control to cruise missiles, we face the eerie
specter of a St. Louis town hall meeting on Tuesday with Al Gore
and George W. Bush debating in the midst of chaos.
The roiling globe provides a different prism to view not only the
nominees, but their running mates. Reporters doing
man-in-the-street interviews began getting a few questions
wondering if Joseph Lieberman would have the proper distance on
Israeli issues. Awkward campaigner Dick Cheney all at once found
himself on terra firma, urging "swift retaliation" against those
who attacked the U.S.S. Cole.
It is easy to imagine the Bush inner circle, always reliving the
glory days of Desert Storm, swinging into action on the strategy
of another Middle East war. You know Poppy is peppering his son
with e-mails like "Talk to Condi. Get with Wolfowitz. Very
tricky. Water's edge. Nation with one voice."
If W., who has been winging it on foreign affairs, had given a
shakier debate performance Wednesday, the race might be over.
With the scary backdrop of the Middle East, Al Gore could have
jumped ahead as he grimly told Americans he had to leave Iowa's
pumpkin-strewn campaign stages to join "the principals" of the
National Security Council in the situation room.
But in Winston-Salem, W. was like Peter Pan. You knew there were
wires holding him up as he flew Around the World With 80 Coaches.
(He had finally figured out what was going on in East Timor.) But
the Bush team did a pretty good job of hiding those wires for an
hour and a half.
And W. ended up with bonus points from the first debate when it
turned out that his suggestions that the Russians be called on to
help push out Slobodan Milosevic ó which Mr. Gore haughtily
dismissed ó turned out to be what the Clinton administration was
already doing.
Al Gore, by contrast, had such a bad second debate that his
foreign affairs I.Q. is not giving him the edge it should as the
world turns dark.
The vice president was in a straitjacket the whole debate,
forcing himself to look humble because he had looked too arrogant
in the first debate. But the humble act was self-defeating.
Gore was reacting to Gore, like the sheriff in "Blazing Saddles"
who holds a gun to his own head and takes himself hostage. W.
seemed almost like a bemused spectator at the vice president's
split-personality psychodrama. And since Mr. Gore was afraid to
show his smarts and his contempt for W., the pair came across as
a couple of regular guys running for student body president.
You knew what the transparent Mr. Gore was thinking, of course,
when he was forcing himself to give that self-effacing little
smile: I know I'm smarter. I'm just not allowed to say so.
The scene conjured up that hilarious "Saturday Night Live" sketch
from 1988, with Jon Lovitz playing Michael Dukakis and Dana
Carvey doing his papa Bush.
BUSH: "So, in summary . . . stay the course . . . thousand points
of light . . . thousand points of light . . . stay the course.
MODERATOR: Governor Dukakis? Rebuttal?
DUKAKIS: I can't believe I'm losing to this guy.
Mr. Gore's confidants always worried that his biggest problem
would be that he does not know who he really is, and there was a
danger he would turn the race into a personality crisis.
The vice president thought his main hurdle was getting out of
Bill Clinton's shadow and showing he was his own man. But the
more he shows himself, the less people seem to like him. If only
he had put himself in that lockbox right after the L.A.
convention.
Now we will see whether W.'s foreign affairs tutorial has staying
power. And whether Mr. Gore can put aside his own identity crisis
and deal with the world's.
=================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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