What $15 Million Bought Al Gore

0 Comments | Insight on the News, August 14, 2000 | by Jennifer G. Hickey

As the Democratic National Committee was spending millions of dollars in soft money on image ads to hype the vice president, Texas Gov. Bush insisted, 'I'm talking about what I want to do.'

The love affair was over before it really began. No sooner had his swaggering charm won over America's heart than the big dogs at Taco Bell decided to deal with declining sales by dropping the Chihuahua, firing the advertising firm that had hawked its product since 1997. Perhaps Al Gore now will be posing as a fierce Chihuahua, an underdog if ever there was one. Unable to find a comfortable fit in his own skin, the vice president has postured as everything else. This week, at the first sign of positive poll numbers, he departed from his pulpit-pounding role as Elmer Gantry and returned to that junkyards dog. As the Chihuahua he might even become a lovable junkyard dog.

A handful of polls conducted July 16-19 had indicated a slight tightening of the presidential race. A Zogby poll showed Bush holding a narrow lead over Gore, 45-41 percent, compared to 47-39 percent a month ago. Never mind that when other candidates were added Bush led 43-37 percent, with Green Party candidate Ralph Nader picking up 6 percent and Reform Party hopeful Pat Buchanan at 3 percent. The Zogby findings were similar to a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll giving the Texas governor a 48-46 percent advantage among 1,063 registered voters. A week before, Bush was said to have led 50-41 percent.

As the Gore 2000 campaign fought its inclination to herald the alleged change to the heavens, the press read the new numbers as a sign former New Jersey senator Bill Bradley's endorsement had shorn up Gore's base. Never mind that the surveys came on the heels of a $15 million multistate advertising blitz launched by the Democratic National Committee, or DNC, and other advocacy groups -- ads which were not (repeat: not) countered by the Republican National Committee.

Furthermore, the Bush campaign had opted unaccountably in recent weeks for an above-the-fray strategy, hesitating to respond to the less-than-presidential charges made by Gore and his surrogates. With Congress nearing the end of its legislative session and the conventions marking the beginning of the real battle, Gore opted to take his big-britches campaign onto Bush's home range to attack the governor's stewardship of Lone Star State affairs as fiscally irresponsible. "Instead of taking up legislation dealing with children's health care, Governor Bush made a tax break for the oil industry the very first bill he signed" declared Gore in assigning blame for an imaginary budgetary shortfall in Texas to Bush's $1.7 billion tax cut.

Ignoring the exposure of an Energy Department memo showing that his own administration is responsible for the recent gasoline-price spike and not Bush's ties to the oil industry, Gore continued to suffer from "great us" overstatus. "Hoping to repeat the 1988 success of then-vice president George Bush in defining Michael Dukakis as a failed governor, Gore lampooned Texas as a land no better than the slums of, well, Al Gore's backyard.

No sooner had this drumbeat found a rhythm than Texas State Comptroller Carole Keaton Rylander released numbers that showed a $1.4 billion surplus. Democrats were quick to call the move political, but Rylander patiently explained that the timing of the surplus disclosure had more to do with Wall Street's upcoming evaluation of the Texas bond rating than with electoral politics.

And Rylander was not the only Texan taking offense at Gore's dishonest characterization of Bush and their state. Texas' highest-ranking Democrat, Texas House Speaker Pete Laney, chose this time to introduce Bush at the National Conference of State Legislators by declaring the governor has "certainly been successful at achieving his goals."

A renewal of scrappiness in the Bush camp was illustrated by the candidate in an appearance on ABC's This Week. Responding to the mantra of Gore attacks as if they were the barking of a Chihuahua, Bush used his defense as offense. "He talks about me; he talks about what I want to do. And I'm talking about what I want to do and my agenda. And that's the way I like it."

Then, awakening at the switch to notice the Democrats had spent $15 million on positive Gore media in recent weeks, the GOP announced it would begin its own campaign promoting the Bush education record in states where the DNC already is on the air and three states in which it is not. In addition to highlighting a policy arena in which Bush feels comfortable and accomplished, the issue of school vouchers is likely to prove critical in California and elsewhere to court Latino and other minority communities. Unlike some GOP nominees in recent years, the Bush campaign is registering a heartbeat in the Golden State and, with Ralph Nader drawing away liberals from Gore, a Bush win in California may be in the cards.

With a school-voucher initiative on the November ballot in the Golden State, education could play a pivotal factor in deciding who lays claim to its electoral gold. Exasperated by the public-school system to which he was sending his children, a businessman named Timothy Draper fought to get his proposal to provide a taxpayer-backed voucher worth $4,000 to parents, regardless of income, who wish to send their children to private schools. According to the Washington Post, Draper says he is willing to devote $20 million from his own pocket to the cause, and you can bet the teachers unions in and out of the state will match Draper dollar for dollar.