Long on Wind, Short on Specifics

0 Comments | Insight on the News, August 7, 2000 | by Jennifer G. Hickey

Al Gore's persona changes from Truman to Churchill to Elmer Gantry, and he continues to fall behind in battleground states. However, George W. Bush has plenty of time to blow it, too.

Pursuing presidential power, Al Gore has paraded across the national stage in a chameleonlike fashion, befitting any and all the special interests he is courting. Very thankfully, the vice president chose not to bare it all for the promoters of Nude Recreation Week, a group celebrating its 25th anniversary.

As naturalists were posing in the altogether, Gore was trying to model himself on Harry Truman, the man from Independence. Give `em hell, Albert, was the phoniest performance so far. But with George W. Bush leading in the national polls, especially on the issue of leadership, Gore apparently figured to kill two birds with one stone by linking the Texas governor to a "do-nothing-for-people Congress." Speaking to a Connecticut audience, Gore showcased his campaign's originality by borrowing a line from Winston Churchill. "Let's face it: Never has so little been done, in so much time, to benefit so few" he quipped, callously mocking the heroism about which Churchill spoke during the Battle of Britain in World War II when he said of the royal air forces that "never have so few given so much for so many."

Gore mewled that Bush, as the "titular head" of the Republican Party, is more than capable of placing a simple phone call to the GOP leadership to push them to act on a patients' bill of rights or antigun legislation. According to Gore, the vice president and titular head of the U.S. Senate who would benefit politically from passage of such legislation, there is danger in such naked partisanship during an election year. The argument lacked the clarity of "So's your old man" but was almost as sophisticated.

Then there was the response of the Gore campaign and Democratic spinmeisters to Bush's address to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People convention in Baltimore on July 10. Breaking with the past practice of GOP presidential candidates, the Texas governor took the advice of House Republican Conference Chairman J.C. Watts of Oklahoma and engaged in a little community outreach (not of the Hsi Lai Buddhist Temple variety) and delivered his message personally to the historically Democratic civil-rights group.

Bush offered apologetic words, hopeful sentiments and pledges of cooperation, but little in the way of specific proposals. While NAACP leader Julian Bond criticized Bush for tackling contentious issues, he acknowledged the "polite" response from conventioneers. Bond said he expected a friendlier reception for Gore but pointedly noted the "warm reception" the audience gave Green Party candidate Ralph Nader. This seemed calculated to underscore both the potential damage Nader could cause Gore and the softness of black support for the likely Democratic nominee.

Bush, who received approximately 20 percent of the black vote in his last gubernatorial race, is eager to tap into Gore's core constituencies as factions of the Democrat base have been less than enthusiastic about the veep and looking to Nader. The long-awaited endorsement of Gore by his primary opponent, former New Jersey senator Bill Bradley, is not likely to affect the outcome of anything short of a snoring contest or mattress test.

In the same up-front manner he took when addressing the issue of Social Security, a death-zone area into which no Republican had ventured in 60 years, Bush made a NAACP appearance that was almost Lincolnesque in its grace and exposed the naked partisanship of some of the national leaders of the African-American community. Meanwhile, responding to the inclusion of comments from South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond in a Bush campaign release, Democratic National Committee Press Secretary Jenny Backus said the Texas governor showed "either mind-blowing political chutzpa or a nauseating attempt to reassure his Confederate flag fans on the far right." While correctly noting Thurmond's 1948 presidential run against Truman on a states-rights platform, Backus ignored Thurmond's change after becoming a Republican. Not only did he fight for the Voting Rights Act and vote for the holiday commemorating the birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., he distinguished himself as the first Southern senator (surprised it wasn't Al Gore Sr.?) to hire blacks in his congressional office. And never mind that Thurmond was honored by the Greater Washington Urban League in 1995 for his work on behalf of the nation's black universities and colleges.

You see, African-American "forgiveness" must be solely accorded to Democrats, such as Sen. Ernest Hollings, who was responsible for placing the Confederate flag atop South Carolina's Capitol Dome in the first place. Hollings has not been asked to apologize for that move or any other provocation to black sensibilities. In 1993, according to the St. Petersburg Times, Hollings bemoaned African leaders who attended an international trade meeting in Switzerland, stating: "[Y]ou'd find these potentates from down in Africa, you know, rather than eating each other, they'd come up and get a good square meal in Geneva." Other press reports range from Hollings telling black delegates to the 1984 Democratic National Convention there was a "place" for them in the state party to referring to Hispanic voters as "wetbacks."