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Jewish World ReviewOct. 3, 2000 / 4 Tishrei, 5761
Chris Matthews
On the eve of tonight's inaugural debate of 2000, George W. Bush displays a similar contempt for rival Al Gore.
"You have a candidate that can be all things to all people, someone who is willing to change perceptions," he told me last week. "That in itself makes voters nervous."
In this important detail, the Texas governor's view of Gore parallels Kennedy's of Nixon. Bush sees the vice president as a man so awkward about his own identity that he must plead for acceptance, not on the strength of his own views and philosophy, but by pandering to the country's electoral constituencies.
I recall Bush's reaction to the Gore declaration to a Mexican-American group earlier in the campaign that, since his first grandchild was born on the Fourth of July, he hoped his next would be born on Cinco de Mayo.
"He's a beaut," Bush grinned, relishing the exposure of so naked a claim to ethnic sympathy. Will his sheer contempt for Gore be the Republican nominee's armor when he goes issue by issue this week with a man informed by a decade on Capitol Hill, then enhanced by eight years as vice president?
If so, Bush will need it. Al Gore is, even by enemy accounts, an unflinching student of the political game.
As a freshmen congressman in the early 1980s, he became the House's recognized expert on the use of state-of-the-art technology to catalog and identify voters back home. Gore was the go-to guy on how a Member of Congress could computerize his constituency, sorting out the pro-lifers from the pro-choicers, the gun owners from the gun opponents, etc.
Gore has been equally zealous in completing his other political homework. When a new ethnic faction becomes fat enough for market -- recall a certain Buddhist temple! -- Gore is among the first to learn of it. If there's a new way to exploit the fund-raising laws, rest assured Gore knows about it.
His sureness of the material, political as well as substantive, and his relish for the game are Gore's best weapons in Tuesday's debate. What he lacks in easy charm, he makes up for in attentiveness. If something needs learning, he will have learned it.
In this detail, it's not Bush who matches the JFK model but Gore.
Jack Kennedy was, like Al Gore, a relentless self-improver. He studied speed-reading, listened to Churchill's speeches and barked like a seal to strengthen his voice. He drove himself to understand ethnic and geographic voting patterns. Before anyone else, he hired a pollster to help him match his message to current voter concerns.
When it came time for the "Great Debate," it was Kennedy who showed up a week early to grill director Don Hewitt about camera angles and other technical factors.
Expect Gore to be equally prepared. Watching him campaign in recent weeks, we can see already his growing comfort in public settings. Forget the cigar-store Indian of yore. Today's Gore is in his best possible shape -- physically, psychologically and politically. Expect him to enter the Tuesday debate room loaded for bear. As always in his career, Al Gore will arrive knowing what he needs to know. And that includes a clearly developed strategy.
Who will emerge the recognized winner in this first debate of 2000?
Answer: The candidate who deploys his assets to greatest advantage.
If Bush ignores Gore and talks to the American voter about his upbeat philosophy and commitment to a full-opportunity society, as he did in his Philadelphia acceptance speech, he will do well.
If Gore avoids trying to show up Bush, but focuses instead on the real-life concerns of people, as he did in his Los Angeles acceptance speech, he will do well.
If both men do what I've suggested, this first debate will be a contest, not of words, but of
09/26/00: Candidates' night and day sides
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