According to political legend, Lyndon Baines Johnson, when in the depths of one of his Texas campaigns for the U.S. Senate, instructed his staff to spread a rumor that his opponent was, ah, “overly familiar” with pigs. “We’ll never prove that,” someone objected. “I don’t wanna prove it,” LBJ thundered. “I wanna hear that SOB deny it.”
That was then. Today, thanks to Al Gore, we have the Internet. Perhaps you’ve seen the Dick Cheney rumors floating around the list serves. It’s the same rumor I hear from my friends in DC. It claims George Bush has decided Mr. Cheney is a dead weight on the ticket, so the Republicans are preparing a phoney story about Cheney having heart trouble, which will allow Bush to ditch him in favor of Colin Powell or John McCain. “Don’t let them get away with it,” the e-mail says. “Pass this along to everyone you know and ruin their October surprise.”
Appealing as all this may sound to members of the Democratic Party, it’s just not true. For one thing, presidential candidates who dump their running mates do not win elections. Period. Just ask George McGovern. Besides, Colin Powell and John McCain declined to run with Mr. Bush last summer, when he was 20 points up in the polls. Why should either man want to jump aboard now?
Al Gore may not have invented the Internet, but his campaign seems to have inaugurated the dirty Internet campaign trick. The rumor rises from the ether (“Who knows how these things get started?” Gore asks) and the rumor becomes something of a self-unfulfilling prophecy. If Bush doesn’t dump Cheney (and he won’t), all those people who forwarded the message can sit back and congratulate themselves for stopping something that was never going to happen anyway. The idea is to undermine confidence in the Republican ticket. It’s an on-line counterpoint to Al’s boorish debate behavior.
The most unsavory aspect of this shenanigan is that it’s pointless piling on by the Gore campaign. The way the race looks from here, the election is over and Al Gore wins. The signs are all there. Polls have said that based on platform alone, more Americans prefer the Democratic plan to the Republican. Odious though he may be, people think Al Gore is more capable and better qualified to move into the Oval Office than George Junior. Finally, Bush is struggling to stay alive in Florida, a state that was supposed to be in his pocket all along.
All the pundits and analysts are saying this is shaping up as the closest race in 40 years, since Kennedy beat Nixon. Thing is, I remember October 1992, when Bill Clinton was bearing down on George Senior. All the pundits then said it would be the closest race since 1960, but it wasn’t close at all.
If the tendency in this election is obvious to a benchwarmer like me, why are the big media not speaking up? For one thing, the Bush campaign may be moribund, but it still has several million dollars to spend in television advertising and it’s unlikely to spend that money with affiliates of a network whose news division is saying that it’s candidate has already gone belly-up. Then there are the ratings. News programs get better ratings if they tell viewers “this is the closest election in a generation.” If you think you already know the winner, the competition is not that much fun to watch. The recent Olympics proved that.
On the print side, I think the pundits are afraid to predict and be wrong. Of course, pundits are wrong all the time, but this is one erroneous prediction people would remember. No one wants a “Dewey Defeats Truman” following him around for the rest of his career.
But I’ll put my neck on the line and predict that Al Gore wins in 2000, not a landslide or a mandate, but a win. Believe me, I’m not happy about it, but there is a silver lining. It takes away the stupid argument that a vote for Ralph Nader is a vote for George Bush. So vote Nader, vote Nader, vote Nader.
Dewey Defeats Truman
According to political legend, Lyndon Baines Johnson, when in the depths of one of his Texas campaigns for the U.S. Senate, instructed his staff to spread a rumor that his opponent was, ah, “overly familiar” with pigs. “We’ll never prove that,” someone objected. “I don’t wanna prove it,” LBJ thundered. “I wanna hear that SOB deny it.”
That was then. Today, thanks to Al Gore, we have the Internet. Perhaps you’ve seen the Dick Cheney rumors floating around the list serves. It’s the same rumor I hear from my friends in DC. It claims George Bush has decided Mr. Cheney is a dead weight on the ticket, so the Republicans are preparing a phoney story about Cheney having heart trouble, which will allow Bush to ditch him in favor of Colin Powell or John McCain. “Don’t let them get away with it,” the e-mail says. “Pass this along to everyone you know and ruin their October surprise.”
Appealing as all this may sound to members of the Democratic Party, it’s just not true. For one thing, presidential candidates who dump their running mates do not win elections. Period. Just ask George McGovern. Besides, Colin Powell and John McCain declined to run with Mr. Bush last summer, when he was 20 points up in the polls. Why should either man want to jump aboard now?
Al Gore may not have invented the Internet, but his campaign seems to have inaugurated the dirty Internet campaign trick. The rumor rises from the ether (“Who knows how these things get started?” Gore asks) and the rumor becomes something of a self-unfulfilling prophecy. If Bush doesn’t dump Cheney (and he won’t), all those people who forwarded the message can sit back and congratulate themselves for stopping something that was never going to happen anyway. The idea is to undermine confidence in the Republican ticket. It’s an on-line counterpoint to Al’s boorish debate behavior.
The most unsavory aspect of this shenanigan is that it’s pointless piling on by the Gore campaign. The way the race looks from here, the election is over and Al Gore wins. The signs are all there. Polls have said that based on platform alone, more Americans prefer the Democratic plan to the Republican. Odious though he may be, people think Al Gore is more capable and better qualified to move into the Oval Office than George Junior. Finally, Bush is struggling to stay alive in Florida, a state that was supposed to be in his pocket all along.
All the pundits and analysts are saying this is shaping up as the closest race in 40 years, since Kennedy beat Nixon. Thing is, I remember October 1992, when Bill Clinton was bearing down on George Senior. All the pundits then said it would be the closest race since 1960, but it wasn’t close at all.
If the tendency in this election is obvious to a benchwarmer like me, why are the big media not speaking up? For one thing, the Bush campaign may be moribund, but it still has several million dollars to spend in television advertising and it’s unlikely to spend that money with affiliates of a network whose news division is saying that it’s candidate has already gone belly-up. Then there are the ratings. News programs get better ratings if they tell viewers “this is the closest election in a generation.” If you think you already know the winner, the competition is not that much fun to watch. The recent Olympics proved that.
On the print side, I think the pundits are afraid to predict and be wrong. Of course, pundits are wrong all the time, but this is one erroneous prediction people would remember. No one wants a “Dewey Defeats Truman” following him around for the rest of his career.
But I’ll put my neck on the line and predict that Al Gore wins in 2000, not a landslide or a mandate, but a win. Believe me, I’m not happy about it, but there is a silver lining. It takes away the stupid argument that a vote for Ralph Nader is a vote for George Bush. So vote Nader, vote Nader, vote Nader.