Mullings A Political Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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Sigh-on-nara, Al

Wednesday October 11, 2000

The Gore campaign is wrong if it thinks, as it apparently does, that Vice President Al Gore's sighing, shrugging, giggling and general acting out is what bothered people the most last Tuesday night.

What bothered people most in the fist debate between Governor George W. Bush and Gore was the Vice President's continued insistence in acting like Zelig - inserting himself into situations in which he did not have a part.

The case in point last week was that fictitious trip to Texas. The Gore campaign demanded the press corps consider the fact that the Vice President was IN Texas to talk about Federal Emergency Management Agency activities. It was in a different part of the state, with a different person, in a different year, but he WAS in Texas.

Gore is going to reprise the Jon Lovitz character on Saturday Night Live:
"Yeh, I was in Texas. I was in Texas with Sam Houston, yeh.
They were going to name the city Gore, Texas in honor of me
because I killed Santa Anna Maria Alberghetti and saved the
Alamo, yeh. That's the ticket. But I said, 'Houston, Texas
is reverse-iambic, Sam baby. Name it after yourself. I'll
settle for being named after an injury suffered in a bullfight.'"

It has been very interesting (and very instructive) to reporters that the instant polls showed Gore having "won" the debate, but as the week wore on it was, at best, a Phyrric victory with the Gore campaign having to spend almost all day every day beating back discussions of Gore exaggerations.

This is what happens when things are not going well for your campaign. You bring your national chairman down to Florida where your candidate is preparing for his second debate and you have him try to beat up on George W. for the air quality of Houston. This is from yesterday's Washington Post article by Mike Allen and Michael D. Shear:
"Joe Andrew, the national chairman of the Democratic National
Committee, got so excited about this pitch that during a
briefing for reporters today he declared that Houston is
'the dirtiest city, you know, in the world.'

Reporters, bored while Gore prepares in private for Wednesday's
debate, jumped on Andrew.

'Mexico City?' one shouted. 'Calcutta?' asked another.

'In the United States,' Andrew corrected himself. 'In the United
States.'"

Even the surrogates who are brought in to deflect the charges of pointless hyperbole are guilty of it.

This has been a very good couple of weeks for the Bush campaign. A month ago, the week following Labor Day, Gore had leads ranging from 3 to 8 points in four out of four polls reported in the Hotline. Yesterday's tease from the same publication: "[The polls] may be volatile, but 5 surveys all agree today, Bush is ahead (lead varies from 1 to 8)."

This is not to say that there may not be one more swap of the lead in the last four weeks, but SpeakOut.com's polling director, Will Feltus, reported today that the "polynomial regression analyses of four major polls all show Bush's trend sharply up and Gore's sharply down."

I believe I may have injured myself typing that.

Don't forget to register to participate in the Fox News/SpeakOut "Rate the Debate" dial poll tonight. Click here for instructions

Alan Iverson, who has been in and out of trouble since high school and now plays basketball for the Philadelphia '76ers, has recorded a rap album, "Non-Fiction" containing lyrics which have, according to the Associated Press, "been called anti-gay, anti-women and overly violent by its critics.

All right. Let's try this on: The Philadelphia '76ers have a guy on their team who records an album which is viciously anti-gay. This is speech protected by the First Amendment.

The Boy Scouts have won a decision in the Supreme Court which permits that organization to ban openly gay adults from being Scout Masters. Also protected by the First Amendment.

Nevertheless, an increasing flow of public entities are refusing to allow scout troops to use publicly supported facilities because of the Boy Scouts being, what? Anti-gay. Not viciously, just plain vanilla anti-gay.

The National Basketball Association is an organization which plays its games in public facilities. If the NBA doesn't formally and strongly object to Alan Iverson's position with respect to gays, how, exactly is it different from the Boy Scouts? And why shouldn't NBA games be banned from publicly financed arenas?

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Copyright © 2000 Richard A. Galen

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