Mullings by Rich Galen | Issue for January 12, 2000

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Sweeping Up After the Gore Parade

Wednesday, January 12, 2000

The Campaign of Al "I-Invented-the-Thesaurus" Gore had to get the brooms and shovels out again last week. And it had nothing to do with Love Story, the Internet, or the Love Canal.

First, we had Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile calling General Colin Powell and Congressman J.C. Watts, in essence, nothing more than set decorations for the Republican party saying, "They'd rather take pictures with black children than feed them."

As inconceivable as it may seem, Major League Baseball took action which is more fitting than the Gore campaign. Commissioner Bud Selig ordered John Rocker to undergo psychological counseling for his racist remarks. Al Gore should, at a minimum, find out who his shrink is and get a group rate.

There have been many more Atlanta Braves fans calling for the dismissal of Rocker than there have been Democrats calling for the dismissal of Brazile. That mark, actually, was met when the FIRST fan called for Rocker's release because no Democrat has gone on the record to demand Brazile be fired.

Then, during one of the 376 debates in the past two weeks, Gore and Bradley got into a frenzy trying to top each other on the matter of gays in the military. Gore said it would be his policy to allow gays to serve openly and would require any prospective member of the Joint Chiefs to "agree with my policy."

Bob Shrum - one of the best counter-punchers in the business - tried to convince us that, because the words "allowing gays to serve openly in the military" was not in the same paragraph with "agree with my policy" we should forget that a policy of gays serving openly in the military was exactly the focus of the discussion. The Gore campaign has a basic problem of Al continuing to say things that sound goofy.

All the GOP candidates made the trip to St. Anselm College in Manchester and the University of New Hampshire in Durham. The St. Anselm event was for young people who got a chance to ask questions of the Republican candidates. At least one young person asked each candidate what he would do to get young people involved in the political process.

Hello? This was a two-tiered auditorium filled with high school and college kids on a pretty nice Sunday afternoon when there were not one but two NFL playoff games going on. OK, the press corps was being paid to be there. The candidates and their staffs HAD to be there. The kids were there because they wanted to be.

Every high school and college student in recorded history has complained at least once about his or her peers being "soooo apathetic at this school." Except me. I never cared that much.

Saturday, playing the whole game while fighting the flu, I conducted a short seminar on behalf of the Republican Party of Maine. The people who attend these seminars (I have done, maybe, seven this cycle) are like those kids at St. Anselm's. They want to be there. They are the activists. And they are committed, and energetic, and enthusiastic. I know it's not me, so it must be the GOP's candidates.

AP Headline Irony: "Trump Distances Himself from Combs" was not, as one might have guessed, a piece about Donald Trump finally deciding to change his hairstyle to something appropriate for any time in the past three decades. It turned out to be a story about Trump not hanging out anymore with rap mogul Sean "Puffy" Combs now that the Puff is in trouble on a gun possession, um, rap..

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