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Jewish World Review Sept. 26, 2000 / 25 Elul, 5760

Chris Matthews

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http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- ASKED WHY he sought the presidency in 1980, Ted Kennedy used 70 hopeless words to find the right one: "restoration." He wanted to rekindle the flame lit so brilliantly by his brothers John and Robert.

It has taken the year 2000 presidential candidates a tad longer to tell us what lights their fires.

Al Gore says he's running to fight for "the people against the powerful."

George W. Bush says he's waging a "contest of ideas" between freedom and big government. Both pitches justify healthy voter skepticism.

Watching Gore campaign last week, for example, I noted a dangerous disconnect in how he invested his California time. Like the legendary Zorro of Spanish colonial times, his daylight hours produced a pageant of populism. With the TV cameras zooming for close-ups, he shared medical worries in Sepulveda and rallied for higher minimum wages in Sunnyvale.

By night, our modern-day caballero carves a different message. At a Beverly Hills dinner that raised $4 million, Joe Lieberman told folks not to worry about those FTC probes of dirty advertising to kids. He and Gore were just going to "nudge" them a little.

At daybreak Tuesday, Gore was back to his populist line, railing at a community center against companies who market patients' medical records. He told of a young woman who bought a take-home pregnancy test only to confront, just days later, a sample case of baby formula plopped on her front porch for all the neighbors to see.

"That is why I'm running for president." Gore called for "tough penalties" on those e-merchants who exploit a person's most intimate health concerns. "That ought to be against the law."

That evening, among the hi-tech barons of Atherton, Gore may have forgotten his daytime call to arms. Crediting his well-heeled audience with being "public-spirited" enough to forgo Bush's tax cuts for the rich, he said nothing about exploitive e-traders.

Bush faces a different day-and-night danger. Like Bill Clinton he now "triangulates" between Gore on the left and the Newt Gingrich-trained brigades of the right who still control Congress. "I do not believe government is the enemy, but I do not believe it is always the answer."

But who will be the young Bush's allies once in office? Those mainstream types who cast the decisive votes November 7, or those hard ideologues who call the shots on Capitol Hill and on Supreme Court appointments?

Who will be Gore's true friends? Those who cheer his and Joe Lieberman's assault on Hollywood violence by day, or the paying guest at their Beverly Hills fund-raiser who made a profane joke of Christianity while Al and Joe sat without objection? "Like Bush, I too found Christ in my 40s. He came into my room one night. And I said, 'What, no call? You just pop in?'"'

Back to that real question CBS's Roger Mudd put to Ted Kennedy a generation ago. Why are you running for president? For your principles or your interests? For those you meet by night or champion by day? For the little people with health problems or the big boys with $25,000 in soft money? For the people of faith or the smug Hollywood insider who sees religion as stand-up material?

I would like to think that the true Zorro, the one who kissed Tipper that night in Los Angeles, would have slashed a Z across that guy's stomach.



JWR contributor Chris Matthews is the author of Hardball. and hosts a CNBC show of the same name. Send your comments to him by clicking here.

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