Peggy Noonan

Hello, Governor. Big weekend ahead. You’re practicing for the debates. Here’s an idea right off the top. You’re practicing, they say, with Judd Gregg. He’s playing Gore. That’s okay, but no one can really play Gore because Gore is so . . . changeable is a nice word. So go ahead with Sen. Gregg, but somewhere along the way just sit with your staff for a few hours and let them tear you apart with the toughest, meanest attacks they can muster. And when a sarcastic aside takes you aback, demand to know what the suggested response should be. (Let them squirm for once.) Rick Lazio didn’t debate one on one before he met up with Hillary, for rehearsal he just got pounded by his staff. It’s a good thing to do, because as good as Gore is, he won’t be able to pound you as hard as a staff eager to show We’re Only Hurting You to Help You. It’ll make Gore seem like a softy Tuesday night.

Your mettle is about to be measured. Do you have the strength to assert persuasively, the wit to defend effectively, can you launch an offensive, make a case, take a punch?

This year, as you well know, the debates are as important as they were in 1960, and ‘76, and ‘80, which is to say they’re more important than usual because the race is so close. And whatever happens in them—your gaffe if you make it, your great line if you say it—will be played over and over more than ever in the million-network universe. So whatever drama happens Tuesday night will enter the national consciousness, and stay there.

It’s the first debate, and most everyone who cares will be watching, which according to my estimation is exactly half the country.

If you win Tuesday you won’t necessarily win the election, but you’ll come that much closer. If it’s a draw, pretty much the same thing—you get points for a draw because everyone knows Gore is a better debater. If you flop big-time Tuesday—well, it’s getting late in the game, and you might never recover.

So: high stakes.

*   *   *

What do you have to do on Tuesday night? You have to demonstrate once again on national television what you show on the stump: that you have the heft and height to be president, that you’re big enough for the job, that you’re a serious man familiar with the facts of government and governance. This is the task Ronald Reagan faced in ‘80: They may call me a low-IQ nuclear cowboy, but I’m a big, calm, intelligent man with the right ideas that grow from the right philosophy. This incumbent, Mr. Carter, is . . . so unfortunately small. But Reagan of course had hard times to help him, and you don’t.

Gore doesn’t have to show he’s bright enough; everyone thinks he’s bright. If you’ve read “Earth in the Balance” you may well think he’s weird, lacking in common sense and perspective, but not dumb. What Gore has to show is that he is not . . . creepy. There’s a big and growing creepiness quotient with him now. The lying thing, the robot thing, the weird-changes-of-speaking-style thing (preacher Al, Oprah Al, Alpha Al), the Buddhist temple thing, the excoriating-Hollywood-Monday-and-sucking-up-to-Hollywood-Tuesday thing, the Clinton-is-one-of-our-greatest-presidents thing.

Gore has to somehow demonstrate to us that he’s a good and normal man at the same time that he’s attacking his opponent. That’s hard.

So: advantage Bush.

Except that Gore is a better debater than you, a really wily coyote.

So: advantage Gore.

Gore is famously . . . let’s call it malleable. He can be what he thinks he has to be. He might be wise sensitive Al tonight, and seem ingenuous and likable, a man who’s sad to point out your flaws but feels forced to because we’re talking here about the leadership of a planet. That might be a pretty good tack to take, and might throw you off your game.

But again, people do what they know how to do. Gore knows how to fight and aggress. He knows how to eat his lunch off Ross Perot’s head. He knows how to flummox Bill Bradley. He’ll probably try to reveal you as a know-nothing bumpkin way out of his league, a guy who lacks command, who has a rÈsumÈ lighter than air.

*   *   *

How will you handle it? Like a Texan. You’ll be unfazed. You’ll laugh and point out that a lifetime immersed in Washington ways is about the worst preparation possible for the kind of president we need now. Outside blood. New ideas, new ways, not the reactionary politics of yesterday.

Normally I worry about your strange humility. No humble man runs for president, only men who think they should be among the most powerful humans in the world. And yet you have often shown a certain diffidence, a tentativeness in debates in the past, and in interviews with the press.

But one senses that is over, or at least very much ending. You spent a day with Sen. Slade Gorton in Washington state this week, and he says he’s never seen you so confident, so happy. And you certainly showed ease and high comfort in your own skin on “Larry King Live” Tuesday night. And your wife has the calm of a school librarian who knows the school bond issue’s going to pass. It’s not bland, it’s kind of a creamy confidence. No, it’s serenity! What an odd thing to see in a spouse in the midst of a presidential campaign. I think I know what she’s thinking: If God wants this to happen it will happen, and to our betterment; if he does not allow it to happen it won’t happen, and to our betterment. Why, then, worry? Except about all the high-cholesterol bologna sandwiches George keeps eating on the plane.

Anyway, those who know you aren’t worried about your confidence. They’re not worried about your ability to fight Tuesday night, either. This is good.

*   *   *

Okay, the big thing I want to say. Do not—not for one second, for one sentence, for one pause—let Al Gore claim and take the moral high ground. He’ll go for it right away. He’s protecting seniors and you don’t care, he’s protecting our schools and you’re their enemy. Well, you know different, don’t you. Go straight for him on the justice issues. How can he stand there and talk about his compassion when there are more uninsured kids in America now than the day he walked into the White House? How can he claim to care when his education policies consign poor children to dead schools? How can he claim to care about the young when his reactionary Social Security plan allows them no freedom to create a secure future? How can he claim to care when his every move is dictated by interest groups who look out for themselves and never for America? How can he claim to care when he won’t even take steps to see that America—and the world—are made safer from nuclear missile attack? Does he not understand that we will someday need it?

Don’t be afraid of that last one. It is the great issue of our time.

You go at Gore with moral confidence, with the conviction you display in private but only fleetingly in public. Don’t you go into the Republican crouch when he talks about the poor, the old. You get your facts out there chapter and verse. Nail him on his cynical (and risky!) scheme to keep the taxpayers’ money to buy off his base instead of giving the people back their hard earned overpayment. You talk about how a family that’s bringing in $75,000 a year with two kids is hit by taxes from every level of government, how the dry-cleaner owner is hit by the same. Tell Gore: “You care about everyone but the people.”

Don’t wait for him to go at you and then swing back. Come out and assert, set the pace, let him react to you. Put him on the defensive.

Don’t be afraid to talk about the character of the administration he represents and is part of and will continue. Even David Broder is urging you forward. Speak the truth about the long trail of eight years of cynicism and humiliation and grave damage to the rule of law.

Another thing. Everyone knows what Gore’s philosophy comes down to: Give everybody everything he wants in terms of money, which is power. Keep the coalition glued together with cash. They’re cynical, I’m cynical, turn the taps on high. Teachers? Pay hike! Schools? More money! Oldies? Subsidized prescription drugs! Social agenda? Maximum leftism to my lefties! Youngies? Whatta ya want, tight jeans? I got tight jeans! Whatever you want I’ll give you!

When giving people things is your “philosophy” you don’t need a philosophy. You’re the Good Humor man; here’s the ice cream. But conservatives have to have a philosophy. Because they have to explain why they’re not giving out the ice cream, why they’re not promising easy money and cheap grace. Or rather, they have to explain why their brand of “ice cream” is real and rich, that faith-based social policy is Häagen-Dazs, that a way to protect our country from missile attack and terrorism is Häagen-Dazs, that Gore’s ice cream is cheap, filled with chemicals and pumped with air.

What’s your philosophy? Do people understand it to be, Al gives too much? Ach—low budget liberalism, that won’t do it. Your philosophy is something else. Tell us. Put it in three sentences, or four. Great things can be put in three sentences or four. Lincoln did it; your hero Churchill did it; Reagan did it, and God knows your favorite philosopher, Jesus, did it every day.

Boil it down. This is what Bush believes. This is Bush’s philosophy. Write it down, internalize it, say it.

Keep it simple. Simple sentences are good sentences because they can be absorbed with ease by normal humans. And because we all know everything that’s true can be expressed in a simple way. “It is better to give than to receive.” “The meek shall inherit the earth.”

Your syntax collapses when you start in with clauses and subclauses. Don’t do that. Straight and simple as a well-thrown ball.

Do you need an opening statement? Short and sweet. Frame what the election is about. A closing statement? Short and sweet again, and direct and simple. This is what it’s about, this is what I believe, this is why you don’t want to go down his road, this is why you want to go down mine. “Come walk with me.”

*   *   *

Some small things.

Governor, when you get off a good line you have a way of looking at the audience as if to say, Isn’t that funny? Join me in laughter! If you can stop that, stop it. Say what you have to say, and when you get off a good line don’t look to the audience or Jim Lehrer for a response, just do whatever is natural—laugh, pause, whatever—and then continue your thought.

Gore likes to interrupt. It’s how he destabilized Bradley in debate and made him look like a tall tree about to crash into the soft green forest. He’ll do it with you, hoping to get you mad or confused or lose momentum. Realize the game and have your concentration high. Say what you have to say to the American people—that is, to the camera—and not to him.

An odd stylistic change. Liberals now think they have to be very tough, and their form of toughness includes sarcasm and balls-of-the-feet aggression. Conservatives now think they have to be Love Republicans, sweet and kindly. It used to be the other way around. Anyway, Gore will be tough in part because his supporters and aides want him to be, they’re stoking him. When he goes over the line, be ready to point it out. Remember he doesn’t know how to be sweet, but you know how to be tough.

Everyone’s sending you lines. Everyone’s sending him lines. The brightest, most withering line writers in the Democratic Party are sending them in from Hollywood and Manhattan and big cities and universities. They’re probably in a big book in Gore’s room on the plane. He’s underscoring the ones he likes in yellow marker right now. His secretary is about to put them on cards so he can review them on Monday.

You might need counterlines more than you need lines. Gore’s people have probably been culling Great Lines from Debates Past. Gore will probably use on you what Mondale used to good effect on Reagan: “It’s not what you don’t know that disturbs me, it’s what you know that isn’t true!” Why would Gore use old lines? For the same reason he uses, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” Reagan’s signature line from the ‘84 campaign. Because he won’t get tagged, that’s why. Because we live in the Age of No Memory. Because we’re bombarded by images and sounds and keep hitting delete, because there’s just so much the human brain can hold on to. Because children aren’t taught history anymore. Because average Americans aren’t political columnists, and have more important things to remember than what Mondale said to Reagan. Because a lot of voters were five or seven or 10 when Mondale said it, and don’t remember.

Think about responses on Gore’s coming lines about (a) how uninformed you are, (b) how you have ties to dread Big Oil, (c) how you stand for and with the powerful at the expense of the powerless.

You need the comeback. And comebacks might rather undo him. Because no one ever has a comeback for Al Gore, have you noticed? He’s not used to someone really slamming the ball back.

Speaking of which, something Gore has to watch out for is an air of arrogance. He is seen as arrogant by present and former aides, he always knows best, has the better insight, the better idea. He’s got some conceit. It shows sometimes, like when he’s trying to pulverize someone in debate. In the past it’s sometimes worked for him. But in national debate in an even-Steven race I think it will. . . be unconsciously absorbed by some viewers, and give them a bad sense of him. When you think he’s being pompous and arrogant just sit back and watch. And then maybe zing him. “Meanwhile, back on planet Earth . . .”

You usually wear gray suits and a light shirt and a nice tie. To me this is good, as I don’t think running for president is a casual Friday event. But I’m afraid this is an old-fashioned view. At any rate, the suits you normally wear are kind of schlumpy, nondescript. Most American men wear that suit. You look like a New Jersey businessman grabbing the keys off the bureau in the morning and kissing his wife goodbye and saying “Didja call the Salvettis about Friday night? Didja ask about the pool when the guy came?”

You look like the nice man in the didja moment.

But debates as I say are formal, and it shows respect to get dressed up. How about a nice dark blue suit, pinstriped or plain. A nice mall suit from an expensive, upscale shop. Crisp bright white dress shirt. Bright tie. I know red is a cliché, but it’s a nice cliché. A deep red silk with stripes or patterns. You’re doing a reverse Regis. We’re all tired of same-colored tie/same-colored shirt. Go old-fashioned and masculine so when you walk in they can smell the after shave.

I hope you got a haircut last week. Don’t get one the day before the debate. Jimmy Carter got a haircut the day before the debates in ‘76 or ‘80 and I became so distracted by the pale gap between the shorn hair and the tanned campaign-face that I couldn’t quite concentrate on what he said, and came awake only for things like “I asked my daughter, Amy, what was the great problem we face today and she told me nuclear proliferation.”: Anyway, if you haven’t already gotten the cut, don’t bother; it can be a little long.

Don’t let them slather too much makeup on you; have your good campaign color and a little powder to take off the shine. By the way, if you start to sweat under the lights, as a normal person would, don’t be afraid to wipe it off. Try to do it when you know the camera’s on Gore but whatever, just wipe it. It’s distracting when you see a sweating candidate not brush off the rivulet that’s working it’s way down his cheek.

A final thing. I remember the good old days of bombastic Bushkin, the irrepressible candidate. You’re still that guy on the plane and the stump but not so much in TV interviews. Which is probably good. Now you’re grounded and sensitive and sober. The closer you get to the presidency the soberer you get. But the thing that made you bombastic Bushkin—the happiness—bring that Tuesday night. Joy is a good thing to see. Before you go on, sit down and breathe in and say a prayer—a born again Christian who forgets to pray is an unassisted warrior—and remember how much you love life.

Remember that it isn’t about you. If you’re serious about all this, and you are, you know that if you win you are going to help America, and if he wins he is going to hurt it. If you know this you know you’re on a mission and you’re a patriot and this is about America, not you. You’re just the guy fate put in the help-America position. Let fate, or as you see it, God, use you. When you know you’re being used by the Divine User you’ve got the only mo that never stops. People with the mo know joy, because that’s what mo is. Take it to the podium and fill the stage with it.

*   *   *

Since I’m enjoying myself bloviating with unneeded advice for you, I’ll give some unasked-for advice to my countrymen.

Please my beloved friends, remember this: Who you think won, won. The guy who impressed you was the impressive guy. As soon as the debate ends the networks will go into 45 seconds of anchor summation followed by a live standup report from the spin room, where, as you well know, the top aides of each candidate will insist he won no matter what:

“The moment when the vice president took out the gun and took wild shots at the audience strikingly demonstrated to the American people that he’s not at all programmed.”

“When the governor rolled his eyes and made fart sounds, he was connecting to the American people in the language they speak, unlike the vice president, who’s incapable of authenticity.”

“But the vice president invented flatulence!”

Then the anchors will throw it to some guy who’ll say his focus group liked this guy or that. Then come the talking heads. I’ll be one. But my opinion, as you well know, is worth no more than yours. It’s rather less important, as you may truly have been an undecided who decided how to vote on the basis of the debate. Which means you made news. You are news.

Don’t let us sway you.

Who you think won, won.

Period.

A friend of mine is voting for Hillary. My friend was born Dem, brought up Dem, lives in a Dem culture and will die Dem because (a) she doesn’t want to be shamed as a person who went Republican, which in her world is viewed as something like getting rich and joining a restricted country club, and (b) she doesn’t really care much about politics and finds all of it boring and off point somehow, with the exception of a woman’s right to choose. She has been watching the political scene in the distracted and impressionistic way most people do. That is, she has been watching the election unfold peripherally, from the corner of her eye, as she blow-dries her hair and talks on the phone. She called recently to share her impressions.

Both in New York and in the presidential race, she announced, we have been given a choice between a candidate who’s nice and not smart, and a candidate who’s bright but not nice.

I said yes, you get the impression it’s a battle between Dumb-Good and Evil-Smart. That’s exactly it, she said.

In a simplistic and therefore limited way—which I notice is more and more the way history is presented to our children because more and more it is taught by television, and television is pictures with thick-as-a-brick narration—”Nixon lost the debate because he tragically refused to wear makeup”—but in a cartoony way, consider:

Rick Lazio and George W. Bush are Dumb-Good. They aren’t followed by a thick cloud of scandal because they don’t make scandal; they appear to be good, honest men, normal men, maybe too normal. They seem more or less average in their interests, affections, gifts. No one hates them, because they’re not at all wicked. They’re not liars; they’re not thieves; they’re not power-mad, and no one will ever call their wives Evita. They’re good men. But they don’t have first-rate minds; they don’t inspire us with their insights or the brilliance of their understanding of the world. They would never say of an element of welfare reform that it is the biggest abrogation of governmental responsibility since the Corn Laws, as Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said. They won’t be writing learned monographs any time soon.

Mr. Bush, as we all know, has a tendency to mispronounce words, like a bright and nervous boy trying to show the admissions director that he’s well-read. His syntax is highly individualistic. He’s bouncy and affectionate and funny in a joshy way as opposed to a witty way.

But he is, almost transparently, a good man. He cares about children; he wants government to be honest; he wants to protect his country from bad guys; he wants to stand up for those who protect us. He is a good governor, he has a natural sympathy for those—the hardware store owner and the woman who starts her own housecleaning company—who are taxed and regulated to death in America. He thinks this abusive. He wants to liberate them. If he becomes president—when, I believe, he becomes president—he will drive conservatives to distraction with his tendency to think with his heart, and not his brain.

*   *   *

Mr. Lazio, continuing the cartoon, is a big happy puppy of a man: Vote for me or I’ll lick you to death. People are trying to paint him as Jake LaMotta after he famously crossed the stage to get Mrs. Clinton to sign the paper. It had been done before—Pete du Pont did it to Bob Dole in debate and to great effect, and Al Gore did it to Bill Bradley. Now Mrs. Clinton and her supporters are trying to turn the moment around by claiming he wasn’t a courtly cavalier.

Really, how tired Hillary-as-victim has become. When she smacked down one of her husband’s erstwhile opponents in an ambush/debate back in Arkansas, Hillary and her friends derided him for treating her like a lady. How sexist, how patronizing. But now Mr. Lazio is bad because he forgot she’s just a girl. Hillary playing victim on this makes me imagine a tag line in a coming Schwarzenegger movie. He kills someone, looks down at the corpse and says, “You invayded my spaaace.”

But Mr. Lazio is a nice man who gets up in the morning and reads the comics with the kids as they all eat Cheerios together. And who enjoys reading the comics. He doesn’t have the occasionally furrowed brow, the air of distraction, the face clouded by thought. He’s like the guy down the block who watches “Everybody Loves Raymond,” a guy who sells insurance and you’d buy it from him because you know he’ll give you the best rates he can.

He’s a good man. But he too is derided in private and in the press as not bright enough, not well-spoken, lacking in heft and height.

*   *   *

Mr. Lazio’s opponent, Mrs. Clinton, has higher-than-average intelligence, has a tough and disciplined mind, is shrewd and if not canny or subtle at least . . . piercing.

But to no one does she seem a good woman, or rather to few, and to no one who’s been watching and pondering these past few years. This week there is more reason to doubt her: the revelation that the guest list for the Clintons’ formal state dinner for the prime minister of India was dominated by cronies, would-be’s, hangers-on, operatives and, of course, big donors who are helping Mrs. Clinton in New York. And the White House continues not to release the list of New York donors and operatives who have been staying over in the Lincoln bedroom and flying on U.S. Air Force jets. Your tax dollars at work. The high mindedness of the diplomacy you pay so much for revealed.

Gossip—mere gossip but all too believable—on the reason for the White House delay: They were going to issue the list Wednesday, the day of the final Ray report, knowing the Ray report would be bad and would submerge the overnights scandal. But the Ray report was “good,” and found insufficient evidence to prosecute; release of the list of overnight/Air Force guests might now be incendiary. Today is Friday. Perhaps at midnight tonight, as the weekend begins, we will get the list. Or maybe 5 p.m. Sunday, when we’re all enjoying the last golden light of early autumn.

*   *   *

As for Mr. Gore, he is obviously bright, with a tough and disciplined mind not unlike Mrs. Clinton’s. But he too this week gave us more reason to doubt what is inside him. I suspect people are starting no longer to be amused but actually concerned by Mr. Gore’s tendency to lie in speeches and interviews. In the past five days he unspooled a heartfelt story of how his mother-in-law and dog both take the same arthritis medicine, but the pooch’s meds are cheaper and this is a scandal. It certainly might be if it were true, but apparently not a word of it is.

Then at a speech to the Teamsters Union Mr. Gore claimed his mother sang a union song as a lullaby when he was a babe, and he sweetly sang the song:

Look for the union label

When you are buying a coat, dress or blouse

All very moving and nice until you realize, as reporters quickly did, that the song wasn’t written until Mr. Gore was 27 years old.

Two big whoppers in one big week. We all know about “Love Story” and Love Canal and I-invented-the-Internet and all the other whoppers, but . . . it’s getting weird. Mr. Gore knows his proclivity for confabulation is dangerous. He has been heavily criticized for it this year, and he received a memo from an aide in 1988 warning him that his tendency to “exaggerate” was a threat to his candidacy. He knows it’s a problem, and he knows it damages him. He knows the press, and his opponents, are subjecting everything he says to scrutiny. And yet he cannot seem to stop it.

His lying looks at this point not like a foible but a compulsion, a tendency that is ungovernable, like a tic. He doesn’t have to do it. He can always make his point without telling stories that aren’t true. Seeing Mr. Gore lie in speeches is like seeing a rich kleptomaniac stealing things he doesn’t need. He seems a verbal kleptomaniac, grabbing untruths from the rack, shoving them in his pocket and hoping to make it past the metal detectors. And then when he’s caught and the bells go off, his reaction is blasÈ. “It was only a lipstick.” It was only about a lullaby, a novel, a dog.

The disturbing question is this: If Mr. Gore cannot help but lie about lullabies and grandma’s medicine, will he lie about troop movements, and espionage, and what our intelligence is telling us about what Saddam is up to?

This is where his predilection goes from gaffe-a-minute campaign fun to serious campaign issue, and question.

*   *   *

Interestingly, I think, Mr. Gore, with his cast iron pecs and the superman hair and the steely cold eyes, actually looks like Evil-Smart. Mr. Bush in his shambling gray suit and every-which-way hair and sweet insecurity looks Dumb-Good.

You might wonder which my friend is going to vote for. In both cases she’s going for Evil-Smart. For the simple reason, she says, apart from a woman’s right to choose, that public servants should be smart. It makes her nervous when they’re dumb.

She has a point, of course. But two other points might follow. One is that high intelligence is less important than character in a public servant. The left and right tend to see this differently. The left often acts as if it thinks brilliance is virtue—Adlai Stevenson was good essentially because he was brilliant and witty. The right tends to think brilliance and goodness are different things and prefers goodness—that is, character. They think—we think—character more than trumps IQ, and we’d rather have old uneducated Aunt Bridget the cook making governmental decisions than a scheming and duplicitous Nobel Prize-winning genius. Aunt Bridget, being a good person, will do less harm. And goodness itself is a kind of wisdom.

My view: in the struggle between Dumb-Good and Evil-Smart, Bush and Lazio have the great advantage. For they really are good men—but they really are intelligent. So what they have to prove is the truth: that they are bright.

Mr. Gore and Mrs. Clinton—forgive me, but I am a columnist and therefore obliged to honestly share my views—have to prove they are not wicked, which means they have to . . . well, it will be an uphill task for both of them. Because it’s easier in general to demonstrate a truth than to consistently get away with that which is untrue. So, advantage Bush-Lazio.

*   *   *

Mr. Bush has promised he will no longer mispronounce words. This will make things more boring, and at any rate is probably not a promise he can keep.

But he doesn’t have to. Here is how he might demonstrate his intelligence. With three big serious speeches, one of which captures as no one in politics yet has the meaning of the past eight years, the trampling of the rule of law, the institutionalized disdain for common citizens. The second speech, a big and serious statement about what is wrong with how things work now, and what you will do to turn it around and create a newer, better world. Include everything from the school-liberation movement to a defense system to protect the United States from missile attack, which we do not have and will to a certainty need before our children are grown. Make this speech into one hard round ball that can be thrown and tossed, thrown and tossed to the American people, so that in time they each catch it. And third, talk about something no one has talked about since 1987: America’s meaning in the world, what we’re here for, what our reason for being and must be in the changing geopolitical universe.

Men who talk like that aren’t stupid; men who talk like that are big, and serious, and right. The perception trickles down. People notice, and suddenly Jay Leno can’t make the Bush-is-dumb joke in the monologue anymore because suddenly the audience isn’t laughing as hard because suddenly they don’t agree with the premise. Because Bush ain’t dumb.

*   *   *

Since I’m writing this column weekly and I’ve decided we’re friends, I wanted to tell you about a wonderful thing I went to last night in Manhattan, the book party at Le Cirque for Liz Smith, whose memoir, “Natural Blond” was published this week. It was one of those sparkling New York evenings—I know that’s a clichÈ but it was, a dark cool autumn-breeze night. As I walked into the small, wood-paneled ballroom the sound of laughter and chatter and tinkling glasses made a great hum; everyone looked beautiful and they were all dressed up and I just stood there and thought: the whole busy world.

David Frost was over here against the wall talking to Gail Sheehy about interviewing Tony Blair this Sunday morning, Blair’s first live sit-down interview since his disastrous 21-point slide in the polls. Over there Matt Drudge was talking into the microphone of Jeannie Williams of USA Today as Mary Tyler Moore and Robert Levine walked by.

Henry Kissinger; Amy Gross, editor of O: The Oprah Magazine; an attractive young man who a friend said was a downtown hairdresser and who turned out to be Prince Edward of England made his way through the room; the murderer-finder Dominick Dunne, the agents Mort Janklow and Lynn Nesbit and Joni Evans, the director Joel Schumacher, tall and handsome as a movie star; Mitch Rosenthal of Phoenix House, than whom no one is more serious about helping kids in trouble with drugs, and the legendary editor and writer Henry Grunwald, with his civic-minded and glamorous wife, Louise.

Peter Jennings and Barbara Walters and Judy Miller and Geraldine Fabricant of the New York Times, and James Hoge of Foreign Affairs, and a nine-year-old boy in khakis and blue shirt who politely sipped a Coke as his mother, who works with Ms. Smith, politely introduced him to the great. It was glitteringly friendly.

Ms. Walters gave a short, funny speech in which she dryly announced that she was Ms. Smith’s lover, that in fact all the givers of the party, including Louise Grunwald and Joan Ganz Cooney of “Sesame Street,” were lovers, and got together as often as they could when their husbands were out of town. The roar of laughter that followed acknowledged the subtext: the attention given in many quarters to Smith’s references in the book to her energetic and colorful romantic life over the span of 60 years.

The book is full of good stories and gossip but the most striking thing about it is its air of sweet tolerance, as if Ms. Smith thinks we’re all damaged and full of excellence and sin and drama and fun and a rich, messy humanity. Which of course we are, at least on our livelier days.

Ms. Smith has mentioned me in her column a few times, in ways that were either mildly complimentary or mildly critical—I gather she finds my politics conservative—but she’s a very fine woman and it’s an honor to be lauded or knocked by her. The party they threw for her was blissfully free of politics and full of good feeling. What a relief from real life. What a great night.

Have you been watching Joe Lieberman? Did you see him on Conan last night, singing “My Way”? Did you see him on Imus this morning talking about religion and culture and Hollywood? He was masterly—interesting and funny and solid. He has the authenticity and self-command of the secure, mature adult, of a man who has nothing to fear from himself.

He is winning the charm offensive, the personality offensive. So is Al Gore; did you see his hip and witty self on Letterman last night? The other afternoon I was home surfing the Net and a friend instant-messaged me: “Are you watching Oprah? Gore is winning the election.” My friend told me later that Oprah’s debut show, on which Gore was the only guest for an hour, had an estimated nine million viewers, the vast majority middle-class women of all ages. From what I saw he must have impressed them all.

This is the problem for Bush-Cheney. I remember the days when the Republicans were the charming ones, when the Democrats were Jimmy Carter or Walter Mondale and the Republicans had the wit and self-possession of Ronald Reagan. Although it’s interesting to me that I can’t think of another charming Republican except Nelson Rockefeller, who was in many ways a regional taste, and John McCain, the flyboy, who has charm to spare.

George W. Bush was of course once famous for his charm. And Dick Cheney didn’t need charm, so full of heft, seriousness, experience and wisdom was he. But now .Ý.Ý. now both seem relatively charm-free zones, and to their detriment.

One of the problems is the obvious and famous one: the media tend to like the Dem and not the Rep, and the Dem feels it and blossoms and the Rep feels it and contracts. This is how an Al Gore—Al Gore!—becomes warm and funny. When Oprah loves you, you know it; when Oprah doesn’t you know that too. Ditto Imus, ditto everyone else. And of course when Mr. Lieberman is whimsical and funny on Conan it winds up being replayed over and over everywhere else, as you will soon find. If a Republican lapsed into charm it would go down the memory hole, straight into nowhere.

People always say, “But Reagan didn’t let them stop him!” That is both true and not true. Mr. Reagan didn’t care if Johnny Carson or Merv Griffin liked him. But Mr. Reagan wasn’t charming in an obvious television way, or rather in the modern television way, by which I mean he wasn’t particularly good at showing up on talk shows and doing witty or endearing badinage with the likes of Phil Donahue. Mr. Reagan was charming on the stump, where his speeches and comments were big and serious and marked by humor and modesty. (Much more important, of course: Mr. Reagan had Mr. Carter, and Leonid Brezhnev, and the Ayatollah Khomeini; Mr. Reagan had patriotism and America’s hunger to stop the long slide.)

Republicans are still capable of seriousness and substance leavened by sweetness and charm on the stump of course, but they’re no match on Oprah and Conan and Dave and Jay.

It would be hard to overestimate the extent to which this is a disadvantage for Republicans and a boon for Democrats. Presidents, as we all know, now live in our living rooms; they are never gone, are always in our face, will not leave. When I was a child the president was Dwight Eisenhower, and you could happily live in America and actually not know that. Presidents were like popes; they made their pronouncements from the balcony of a big white building and left. Now choosing a president is like picking a friend, or a tenant who’ll live downstairs with a four-year lease. You want this person to be pleasant and interesting and bright. It’s understandable that you’d want this.

Poor Republicans. They don’t, in their hearts, think any of this is worthy of them. They think to focus on humor and hipness is cheap, secondary, merely manipulative. They’re right, of course. We are entertaining ourselves to death in America, and one of the signs and expressions of this is the fact that we don’t want to pick a president who doesn’t entertain us. We don’t even want a head of the Joint Chiefs whom we don’t find attractive. As if it mattered. When of course it doesn’t.

And yet of course it does.

I am depressing myself, and may be depressing you. I will share yesterday’s thought, discussed at length with a friend. In 1992 the Democratic nominee for president, Mr. Clinton, won with 43% of the vote. The other 57% went to nominees more conservative than the Democrat, George Bush and Ross Perot. In 1994 the House and Senate went Republican for the first time since the 1950s. In 1996 the Democratic nominee for president won with 49% of the vote. In an era of extraordinary prosperity and almost unbroken peace, the incumbent couldn’t manage a majority. This is still a more-conservative than more-liberal country. It is not by any means over for Mr. Bush.

There, I feel better. But Gov. Bush: Please, please, get some Hollywood writers to send you wonderful funny lines and jokes. That’s what Al Gore does. His wit comes from Hollywood and New York. He isn’t sitting around wisecracking and then asking Bob Shrum, “Is that funny? Should I use that?” Hire humor. First-class humor. Now.

That sound you’ve been hearing, that wind softly rattling the window panes—that’s New York state’s three million registered Republicans breathing a sigh of relief. Rick Lazio’s got what it takes.

He won Wednesday’s debate. He not only won it, he won it by winning and not just by coming out even. He didn’t treat Hillary Clinton with kid gloves; he treated her like a pol who deserved a punch, and he swung. Crossing the stage with the agreement not to take soft money was masterly, reviving an old debating tactic—surprise your foe and don’t let go—and making every front page in the state. But most of all, Mr. Lazio engaged—he looked at her, talked to her, put the spotlight on her—and laughed.

All of it good stuff. But the most riveting moment, and the one that will be long remembered, was NBC’s Tim Russert’s use of videotape to confront Mrs. Clinton with her famous Matt Lauer “Today” Show interview when the Monica story broke. This was something new—I don’t remember ever seeing a debate moderator use taped clips of a candidate’s past interviews, and I’m surprised Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Lazio agreed to it, if they did.

Mrs. Clinton’s angry visage in that two-year-old tape, her bitter hardness, were fascinating to see after all this time. (So was the way her face has changed, which I don’t think was lost on anyone watching. It made you think of the old chameleon charge, “This woman will do anything and be anyone to win.”) And it is that—how she acted in the Lauer interview, the charges she made, and how she would now have to address her actions—that made Mrs. Clinton gulp, not the general subject matter, which she’s been handling smoothly for two years. But then she’s never once been pressed on her part in the Monica matter, or pressed for an apology for her statements.

She was very lucky in Mr. Russert’s choice of clips; he did not include the “vast right-wing conspiracy” but only referred to it later himself, and he did not include the most deadly quote from that interview, when Mrs. Clinton told Mr. Lauer: “When this is over some folks are going to have a lot to answer for.” Still, when Mrs. Clinton’s answered Mr. Russert, she floundered and lost her footing—”That was a very, a very painful time for me, for my family and for our country”—which was fascinating to see, because Mrs. Clinton is very smooth and doesn’t flounder. But she probably didn’t think anyone would ever play that old footage right in front of her and then insist on a response.

What a moment. Mrs. Clinton’s people are hopefully spreading the spin that Mr. Russert’s challenge will start a new round of sympathy for Hillary, who, they say, was a victim of that scandal. But one senses that people no longer view Mrs. Clinton as a sympathetic figure, that 18 months of seeing her operate as a hardball, hard-gut pol has diminished her ability to seem the victim.

*   *   *

Here is why I think the debate was important, even crucial. Mrs. Clinton had a strong voice and a steady gaze and she touched on all her issues and she looked attractive. But she was cold, and programmed, and when she tried to be tough and assertive she seemed sarcastic and Madame Nhu-ish. She did not lose any friends in the debate, but she didn’t make new ones. If you tuned it not liking her, you didn’t like her when it was over. She pleased her base. She didn’t didn’t move forward.

If you tuned in not liking Mr. Lazio, you may have changed your mind or begun to change your mind. He’s not sleazy or dark; he’s bright and winning. He was equal to his opponent, and maybe more than that. When he was tough with Mrs. Clinton he seemed not snarky but strong—”I agree that Mrs. Clinton has a record in education, and it was a disaster.” “I think that, frankly, what’s so troubling here with respect to what my opponent just said, is somehow that it only matters what you say when you get caught.” He seemed like a normal person, not like a programmed political windup doll. And though he still looked young, did you notice the hair in front that’s suddenly going gray? He wanted you to, I think. He combed his hair in front in a way that seemed to accentuate the grayness. (He’ll be on the stump upstate today saying things like, “Yeah, my first gray hairs—I’m calling each of ‘em Hillary.”)

He made new friends and showed doubters he was big enough to take Mrs. Clinton, which is half of what he has to do in the campaign.

Both candidates, stuck at about 45% in the polls, needed new friends. I think he got them and she didn’t.

But the other half of what Mr. Lazio has to do in the campaign—prove he’s big enough to hold the Moynihan seat, prove to New Yorkers that he has sufficient heft to be their senator—really remains to be done.

*   *   *

Mr. Lazio must more forcefully communicate his brand of compassionate conservatism, which he speaks of with engagement and feeling in private and inadequately on the stump and in commercials. I have had one private conversation with him, and he told me that he is a Republican who wants to help with the “rungs.” He said it is a legitimate function of government to help new immigrants and people in crisis to grab a few rungs on the ladder and pull themselves up and out. But he didn’t believe in the old-fashioned ways of doing this, the old tax-and-spend bloated government ways; there are other approaches that are both more effective and more constructive. It was really interesting what he said, and he ought to share it on the stump.

He also flattered me by saying—I didn’t take notes, so I quote from memory: “I have a big question that’s been on my mind and if you have any thoughts I’d like to hear.” I said sure. He said, “How do I on the one hand maintain the right level of combativeness toward an opponent and at the same time effectively communicate how the new Republicans think and what we believe? How do I break through on my philosophy?” I didn’t know what to say, because I was so surprised. I have heard politicians ask questions in private about the big thing that’s on their mind, and it’s always fund-raising or how do I get the teachers union or if I do this will the press say that. It’s never about meaning or philosophy.

I told Mr. Lazio this, and he started to laugh but continued to press: How to make his beliefs clear, how to show what new Republicans, the young Republicans, believe in? I said I guess he just has to start talking about it.

He was refreshing. Yet while I don’t see him much on the stump, it’s not my impression that he’s breaking through in this area as he should.

*   *   *

There will be another debate. A chastened Hillary will fight back hard. Next time she’ll have her own version of crossing the stage with a soft-money agreement, she’ll have her own version of Happy Warrior. Her aides are focus-grouping the debate right now, and they’ll be giving her lines and advice to counter what didn’t work this time.

It will continue to be close. It ain’t over until the first lady sings. But I will be surprised if Mr. Lazio doesn’t get a boost in the polls from Wednesday’s performance. And if he uses that boost to make it a stronger, deeper campaign it could mean everything.

*   *   *

Wednesday’s debate was the best in New York since the Lewis Lehrman-Mario Cuomo debate of 1982. That meeting was wonderful, in part because it served the public by focusing on meaning. Messrs. Lehrman and Cuomo spoke of the big things—the proper role of government, what it should expect of us and do for, and to, us. The Clinton-Lazio debate showed us two people, to the advantage of one and the disadvantage of the other. It was revealing in part because there was a moderator who pressed each candidate to reveal and respond and answer. But neither candidate really dealt enough with belief—she, one suspects, because she knows her true beliefs would not be attractive to a lot of voters, and he I think because he falls into the unconscious defensive crouch of Republicans in New York. They are a minority group; they fear being misunderstood; better just to smile. But they can’t, or rather their leaders can’t.

New Yorkers were well served in this first Senate debate. They got a sharp sense of who was at issue; next time, one hopes, they’ll get a sharp sense of what is at issue.

Memo to: Hillary Clinton, Rick Lazio
From: Lee Atwater
Re: Tonight’s debate

OK, listen up. Where I am you don’t root for Reps or Dems, you root for the truth and hope for a show. With you two I’m still waiting on both. This whole campaign you’ve been waging has been kind of . . . demure! Kind of “Who’s the nicest girl at Wellesley?”

Now you got to mix it up. The contest you’re in is so close, such a tossup, that it could actually be settled by what happens tonight in the ring.

That’s how I see you, as fighters. That’s what all good pols are, ultimately. Right now, Hillary, you’re on your stool in your corner and Harold’s whispering in your ear and Mandy’s adjusting your mouthpiece. Rick, you’re over there nodding to Murphy and moving your head left and right to unkink your neck, as fighters do.

OK. Here’s my last-minute advice before the bell.

You walk out there and you’re both so pumped with adrenaline, excitement and fear that your hands are shaking. Hillary, you walk over to Rick as soon as you get on the stage. Laughingly, real friendly, put out your hand and maybe try to kiss him, to show you’re warm and he’s a wuss.

Rick, don’t let her walk to you. You walk over to her instead, like a man. Don’t give her the big-tan smile, give her a small smile and a nod. Then pivot to the audience and wave to them with the big smile.

Go back to your podiums. Rick, if you wear reading glasses put ‘em on now, and look at your notes. Hillary, if you wear reading glasses, don’t.

*   *   *

It begins: “Ladies and gentlemen . . .”

All right, psychology. Rick, in your head she’s a tank. Fine. But her steering’s busted and she’s running out of gas, so don’t worry about her. Hillary, you’re not exactly nervous when you think of him. One of the great things about the Clintons is they never run against anyone they respect, because the minute someone becomes an opponent of the Clintons the Clintons understand he’s a bad person, an idiot. When it comes to Lazio—let’s face it—you think you’ve scraped more interesting things off your shoe. Fine.

Strategy. Rick, pols do what they know how to do. Hillary will fight and aggress. You’re still one of those white guys tying himself in knots on how tough to be when you’re debating a woman. Forget that, it’s not a question. No one thinks Hillary Clinton’s a woman, they think she’s a phenomenon, like the weather. Treat her like you’d treat a guy.

She’s smart. She’s going to take the issues on which she is most vulnerable—trustworthiness, etc.—and flip ‘em, pretend that they are the areas in which you are most vulnerable. She always does this, because it clouds things up and makes them confusing.

She’s going to accuse you of having a weak record, of being untrustworthy, of being a hypocrite. She’ll start out strong and say that in comparison with you she has a 30-year record of achievement in education and in other things.

Fine. Let her come out and land a few. That will establish that she is the aggressor. Then you get on the balls of your feet and unleash a serious critique of all that she is and represents. She says she has a record in health care, you say she tried to take away the right of patients to choose their own doctor and to decide their own treatment. She says she can work with the big boys in Washington, you say: “Your own party wouldn’t work with you in the House and the Senate.”

This is important, Rick: Look at her, and engage. Normally I tell debaters not to talk to the opponent but to talk to the camera, to the viewers. But in your case, look at her. Put out your arm and point sometimes. Don’t forget the camera, turn to it and play to it occasionally, but engage her. It’ll unnerve her a little.

And don’t always be smiling. Look serious, because this is serious business—you’re gonna save the people of New York from more high tax, high spend, high promise, high disappointment.

Lately, Hillary’s taken to talking about “what we do with our surplus.” But it isn’t her surplus, and it isn’t a surplus. It’s billions in overpaid taxes yanked out of the pockets of the people of Buffalo and Amityville. Challenge her: Why can’t the people have their money back? Why should they believe she and her friends will spend it better than they will?

Another thing. Hillary is completely used to talking in one-minute and two-minute speeches. She does this because she has spent the past eight years being the First Lady and not being interrupted. And before that it was 12 years as the governor’s wife.

So interrupt her, press her, knock her off her stride. Do it politely, but persistently. “Oh, Mrs. Clinton, that is only rhetoric. The truth is—.” She may well reveal the imperious temper that rattles her staff. It ain’t a pretty sight. Help her show it.

*   *   *

Hillary, you have to be careful. But you can win this. Rick Lazio has that fatal politeness, that disheartening good cheer. He’s one of the Love Republicans. They’re just so happy and eager they could burst. You go wipe the smile off his face.

Go in hard, right away, and destabilize him. Remember, no one thinks you’re a woman, they think you’re a toughie. Fine, be tough. Tough, but pretty. ‘Cause in a funny way, the prettier you look, the more competent you look.

People aren’t sure Lazio has enough heft to fill the Moynihan seat. One of his problems: Like most Republicans, he is palpably bored by the complexities of public policy and legislation. But Democrats—position papers are their pornography.

Dazzle and impress people with your grasp of the arcana of public policy. When he says, “We have to cut taxes,” you just smile and shake your head and assure him you want to cut taxes as much as the next guy but it has to be done in a way that helps working families and not the rich. Then say we have to protect the Kilicott Amendment within subclause 746 of the IRS Code as amended in 1982 by Ronald Reagan. I just made that up. But it sounds real. You can make one up, too. Rick’ll get that earnest look and try to puzzle it out and by the time he catches up you’ll be on a woman’s right to choose. He’ll be so confused he’ll stutter. People who stutter in debates don’t have heft.

You know that he’ll try to hit you with what his people and your people know are your weak points. A public perception that you’re dishonest, a user, too clever by half. But I like the way you’re going to turn it on him—that he’s untrustworthy on campaign funding, untrustworthy in his support of abortion, a maneuverer who got along with Newt Gingrich. You charge first. Then he has to say, “I know you are but what am I?” like a kid.

Look beautiful and smiling. The bright colors, that pastel-sweater-thrown-over-the-jacket thing you’re doing, it’s good. It heightens and warms your color. A solid hour for makeup—the eyes, the eyes. Smile a lot—a smile is your best friend, makes you look not fierce but friendly.

Hillary, you need humor. Rick, you need wit. Both of you should walk in with three good jokes or three good lines. Hillary, two of yours should be self-deprecating. Try to have a line about Lazio so good that it makes even him laugh. An opponent laughing is half taken.

Hillary, watch your voice. I saw you with Charlie Gibson on “Good Morning America” yesterday and believe me, the uninflected suburban school-board drone is wearing thin. Try to use your voice in a way that has more . . . woman in it. Don’t mean to be sexist but you sound preachy: “The Wellesley class of ‘68 tells us how to floss.” Don’t be patronizing. A little humility wouldn’t hurt.

If he gets on the scandals don’t look stricken, just shake your head sadly. “This isn’t about the past, it’s about the future.” “He can try to drag us down into this whole world of unproven allegations, and if that’s how he wants to spend his time then I think that’s just sad. I will spend my time trying to improve life for New Yorkers who aren’t as lucky as Rick Lazio, or me for that matter.”

*   *   *

Remember to thank Tim, and all the network news shows hooked in. Thank the people for their time and attention. It’s homework for them, remember. They do it because they want to be good citizens.

You be good citizens, too. Talk about the meaning of this election, and what’s really at issue.

Hillary, if you win this debate you probably win the election and reach straight for the presidency. Rick, if you win this one you stop Clinton II in its tracks, you win a moderate presence from New York in the U.S. Senate, and you settle down to being great, which is what you want on your tombstone. “New York’s Great Senator.”

That’s big, on both sides, for both of you.

Make it sound as big as it is.

Has George W. Bush bottomed out, and is he starting to come back? There is reason to think so, and not only because every newspaper in America has “Bush Done For—GOP Panics” stories on the front page which, considering your usual journalistic time lag, suggests his comeback is well under way. Mr. Bush’s campaign this week took on an urgency, with substantive proposals on Medicare and education, and an aggressive look at Al Gore’s programs. And the debate debate, which looked flaky at first, seems to deserve greater scrutiny, and bears the potential for dividends.

I think this because I’ve been reading transcripts of “Meet the Press.”

*   *   *

Mr. Bush agreed to debate Mr. Gore in a prime-time version of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” hosted by Tim Russert, because he had to make a virtue of necessity. Mr. Gore is a gifted debater—disciplined, seasoned by four national political cycles, possessed of a killer’s instincts. Mr. Bush is not a great debater. He hasn’t even shown himself to be a good debater. In the primary debates he looked like he was sliding down in his chair so teacher wouldn’t notice him. And when he tried to speak candidly, saying for instance that Jesus was his favorite philosopher, he couldn’t explain why except to assert that Christ had changed his heart, which seemed both believable and inadequate.

So Mr. Bush is bad at debate and Mr. Gore is good, but the latter has reason to fear a grilling from a persistent questioner and the former doesn’t. Mr. Gore wants to debate but not to be interviewed, and Mr. Bush wants to be interviewed but not to debate. The brilliant answer: have a “debate” in which Mr. Russert, who has his own killer instincts, asks questions. That way Mr. Gore, who has the talent to dominate, will not be allowed to. It won’t be Big Al versus the Shrub. It would be a moderator with two equals.

Mr. Gore had clearly agreed to this format and venue. In an interview with Mr. Russert on July 16, he even pushed for the CEO of General Electric, which owns NBC, to get Mr. Bush to agree:

Mr. Gore: I’ve accepted for two or three months now your invitation to debate on this program. Have you gotten a yes from Gov. Bush yet?

Mr. Russert: His campaign says he will debate you, and the request is under active consideration . . .

Mr. Gore: “Well, how are you going to persuade him to say yes, Tim?”

Mr. Russert: “Well, maybe you’re helping today.”

Mr. Gore: “Well, do you think so? But what kind of approach—can you get Jack Welch involved?”

But when Mr. Bush accepted the debate this week, Mr. Gore suddenly refused to take part. The media are letting him get away with it for several reasons, including (a) the other broadcast-network shows failed to get the debate and are not happy, and (b) the debate would be good for a competitor, and helping Tim Russert isn’t their job. It isn’t mine either, but getting both candidates in a setting in which they will reveal things about themselves, their history and their thinking is.

*   *   *

In the 40 years since John F. Kennedy debated Richard Nixon, presidential debates have declined as venues in which revelation and insight occur. They are now what was once said of flying—hours of boredom punctuated by a few seconds of sheer terror. (“Mr. President, are you saying that Poland is a free country?”) Modern debates consist of a 90-second sound bite in which one candidate asserts, followed by 60 seconds in which another rebuts, followed by 30 seconds of answer to the rebuttal. It is rote, ritualistic, unrevealing. It is perfectly suited to Al Gore, the human Conair 2000, who opens his mouth, flips the switch and blows, and who also wrote a college paper on how presidential news conferences can be handled through prefab sound bites.

But what has frozen and hardened in these debates could be broken up and made fluid again by the presence of a seasoned interviewer. Mr. Bush thinks Mr. Russert is tough but fair; Mr. Gore thinks Mr. Russert is—well, he thinks he’s the man who put him through this:

Mr. Russert: “I want to ask you a very simple question. Do you believe that life begins at conception?”

Mr. Gore: “No. I believe there is a difference. You know, I believe that the Roe v. Wade decision wisely embodies the kind of common-sense judgment that most Americans share.”

Mr. Russert then showed a letter Mr. Gore had written in 1987, in which he said he consistently opposed federal funding of abortions because government shouldn’t take part in “the taking of what is arguably a human life.” Mr. Gore answered that he had changed his mind on that “10, 15 years ago.”

Mr. Russert: “But you did vote to define a person as including an unborn child.” Mr. Gore said it was a “procedural vote.”

Mr. Russert: “When do you think life begins?”

Mr. Gore: “I favor the Roe v. Wade approach, but let me just say, Tim, I did—”

Mr. Russert: “Which is what? When does life begin?”

Mr. Gore did not answer, but referred instead to changing his position on federal funding of abortions. The interviewer pressed again.

Mr. Russert: “But you were calling fetuses innocent human life, and now you don’t believe life begins at conception. I’m just trying to find out, when do you believe life begins?”

Mr. Gore replied that Roe v. Wade “proposes an answer to that question.” Asked what it is, he replied that there is “a developmental process during which the burden kind of shifts over time.” He vowed to protect “a woman’s right to choose.” Then Mr. Russert changed approach.

Mr. Russert: “Should there be a restriction on minors getting abortions without parental consent?”

Mr. Gore: “Difficult question, because there are all kind of circumstances where you have some children kind of raising themselves in situations where their families are fracturedÝ.Ý.Ý.”

He added that the decision needs to “be worked out in the context of a woman’s right to choose.”

Mr. Russert: “But a child needs permission to have her ears pieced.”

Mr. Gore: “I understand.”

Mr. Russert: “You don’t want parental permission for an abortion.”

Mr. Gore said some proposals on this “have been a backdoor effort to eliminate a woman’s right to choose.” Mr. Russert asked why not support parental notification in which a judge could intervene in the kind of cases he refers to. Mr. Gore said, “Well, I’d want to look at that.” So Mr. Russert changed approach again.

Mr. Russert: “Right now there’s legislation which says that a woman on death row—if she’s pregnant, she should not be executed. Do you support that?”

Mr. Gore: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Mr. Russert: “It’s a federal statute . . . that if a woman is pregnant and she’s on death row, she should not be executed.”

Mr. Gore: “Well, I don’t know what the circumstances would be in that situation. I would—you know, it’s an interesting fact situation. I’d want to think about it.”

It was stupendous, an hour of relentless and informed questioning on Social Security, the surplus, tax policy, and whether the Boy Scouts should be allowed to exclude gay members (Mr. Gore couldn’t say). It was the most revealing presidential interview since Roger Mudd met Ted Kennedy in 1980 and showed us Mr. Kennedy’s utter inability to make a case for his own candidacy.

*   *   *

Mr. Russert is becoming the first indispensable television journalist since Walter Cronkite. With his happy-killer mug, and his desire to bore in, he makes you think of what was said of Lenin: “He could exhaust you by listening.” (Idiotic but defensively necessary note: I worked for MSNBC, which is part of NBC, during the political conventions this year; I also did a half-hour interview with Mr. Russert when my book on Hillary Clinton came out, and emerged exhausted though not horrified.)

Mr. Gore has his reasons for not wanting to be subjected to another grilling; but the public might benefit greatly from it, as it would be what we want all such events to be: revealing.

Mr. Bush, at this point, should speak frankly of his underdog status in whatever debates finally occur. He should start making jokes about it, too, and making people laugh at the difference between his lack of gifts in that area and Mr. Gore’s abundance of them. He might even come right out and declare Gore the winner going in. Mr. Bush should also explain frankly how you can be both best candidate and worst debater, the right man with the right ideas and the lesser talent for asserting them.

Which brings us to the old empty-chair gambit. Mr. Bush says he’ll show up at the debate time with an empty chair, put it down on the sidewalk and offer to debate. Some joker has already answered, “Watch out, the chair will win!” That is one great line, but it begs for a comeback, and perhaps if Mr. Bush meets with the press for an hour or two that night and takes all questions, the comeback will be his.

We approach Labor Day, the traditional kickoff of the American political season. Labor Day of course used to be a holiday with parades and picnics at which politicians celebrated the virtues of the working man who for once was getting a day off.

There are still parades, but Labor Day now is mostly a matter of the last day of summer vacation; Americans are at the beach or packing up the lake house or taking the kids to Target and Staples for school supplies. Most Americans this Monday will be preoccupied with coming or going, with planning the packing or navigating their way through traffic jams. But their cars have radios, and radios have news reports, and there’s no news on Labor Day but what politicians are charging and asserting, and so Labor Day is still Labor Day, and it still counts.

Politicians will have to try harder from here on in, and think smarter. Now they’re competing not with summer’s distractions but with autumn’s realities—school, and work, and the new TV season, which isn’t important everywhere but is in America. Also, they’re running out of time. Monday is Sept. 4; Election Day is Nov. 7. Sixty-four days. From now on there is no long-range planning in campaigns, just planning.

The two most fascinating and compelling races remain the presidential race between George W. Bush and Al Gore and the New York Senate race between Hillary Clinton and Rick Lazio. The polls say both races are neck-and-neck, which may in fact be true.

Mr. Bush’s presidential bid continues in the Perils of Pauline tone that has marked it since the beginning. He is always the strong, probably unconquerable frontrunner being surprised by the unexpected strength of the opponent. In the winter he couldn’t be beaten—until he got beat, by John McCain in New Hampshire. Then he came back in South Carolina and couldn’t be beaten—until he got beat, by John McCain in Michigan. Then a good convention and a good speech and he couldn’t be beaten—until Mr. Gore bounced out of Los Angeles and beat him in the polls.

*   *   *

Mr. Bush always seems hurt, jarred when he falls. His syntax, normally frail, collapses; thick tongue sets in, “hostage” becomes “hostile,” thoughts collide. His father was like this; when pressed about the closeness of his friendship with president Reagan he tried to say they have “excellent discussions” and wound up saying, “We’ve had sex.” It is not the sound of dumb, it is the sound of quick thoughts crashing into each other and producing verbal accidents.

Still, the Democrats and many in the media have been in a new round of the attempted Quayle-ization of Gov. Bush, and to some degree it has taken hold. Part of it is inevitable: clips of candidates fumbling are irresistible, and fun to see; they brighten every news and chat show, and so are repeated. But part of it is the way Democrats have learned to operate in the Clinton era. Rush Limbaugh isn’t wrong, he’s a big fat idiot. The Democratic operative Paul Begala has a book called “Is Our Children Learning?” that offers not a serious case for Gore or against Bush, or even a passionate one, but that simply asserts that Mr. Bush is a dullard. Democrats have learned the past eight years that you don’t have to make a serious case for or against; all you have to do is change the focus of the argument and heighten it. (When I went on call-in shows to talk about my book “The Case Against Hillary Clinton,” none of her supporters ever made the case for Hillary; instead they would say, “Mary Bono didn’t deserve her husband’s congressional seat either.”)

And part of the attempt to Quayle-ize Bush is simply tradition, and in a way an understandable one. Dwight Eisenhower was spoofed by Eastern eggheads as barely coherent, Gerald Ford as a fumbling idiot, Ronald Reagan as retarded, George Bush pére as a ninny. Bright Democrats do this because they don’t really understand how Republicans think, or why they think what they think; their answer, by now a tradition, has become: Because they’re stupid.

Democrats and media folk have been equally quick and keen to laud the intelligence of Democratic presidents. Jimmy Carter was brilliant, a nuclear engineer, probably the highest-IQ president ever to live in the White House. Or that at least is what they were saying in 1976 and ‘79. The same is said of Bill Clinton today, in almost the same words—”He’s probably the most brilliant man we’ve ever had as president,” a close friend, a doctor and no fool, told me recently. I pointed out that it was therefore a real accomplishment that he has never, in eight years, said anything intellectually interesting. My friend the doctor blinked, and thought, and did not dissent. We did however agree that Clinton has said interesting things in depositions.

*   *   *

Anyway, I don’t think any of this matters much. Voters don’t expect Republicans to be intellectuals, don’t seem to admire intellectuals greatly, and seem to have the sense that an extremely high IQ can be an encumbrance in the presidency, as in many other great leadership positions. Intellectuals are always tying themselves in knots, missing the obvious, discovering new things to believe in. Presidents have to have good heads, good hearts, solid beliefs, courage; they can hire brilliance and cleverness.

The Dan Quayle problem isn’t Mr. Bush’s great challenge. He doesn’t have to prove his intelligence. He’s obviously bright, he has had two successful terms as governor. But he needs to show solidity. He needs to show that he’s got a strong and even keel, that he is serious about policy because it grows from philosophy that grows from experience.

Mr. Bush doesn’t talk enough about his philosophy. I don’t believe he ever has, in any extended way. Most conservatives and libertarians, for instance, believe in general that that government governs best that governs least. They also know why they think this. Assuming Mr, Bush thinks it, I’d certainly like to know why. Why is it better that your federal government not take more power from people? Should it give some back? How?

When you explain the predicate to the American people they listen, and understand; and they work your positions into the predicate for you, as long as the positions make sense.

That’s what they did with Ronald Reagan. They understood what his conservatism was, what it was about, where it came from. And so they could fit his tax cutting logically under his philosophical umbrella. Thus Mr. Reagan cohered.

I am not sure Mr. Bush coheres. I don’t think he does, fully.

Mr. Gore is getting at this when he presses Bush to be specific. The vice president is trying to say of the Texas governor, “There is no there there.” But Mr. Bush is specific, and comes followed by a paper trail of dense issue papers, as Mr. Gore well knows. What Mr. Bush isn’t is abstract and thought-filled. But Mr. Gore can’t challenge Bush to be more philosophical and thought-filled because .Ý.Ý. well, he might do it, which would help him beat Mr. Gore.

*   *   *

Mr. Gore is like Mr. Bush in that he seems affected, perhaps unduly, by what the press is saying, by whether or not he’s thought to be on a roll or in a dive. (Politicians are amazingly frail, or at least frail for tough guys. They really care what’s being said about them. You’d think by the time a man is running for president he’d be less impressed by what’s in Tuesday’s paper.) Right now Mr. Gore is on a roll, enjoying the Lieberman bounce, which sounds like a new dance. The vice president is, as Maureen Dowd points out, newly moussed, his hair thicker, his chest broad and his buns steely. He looks energetic and attractive, like a model in a boomer khaki catalogue, stepping forward as he looks at his wristwatch in a peaked-pecs pose.

I keep wondering why, since Al Gore first became vice president eight years ago, Tipper has made it a point to talk about how sexy he is, how virile. What have their focus groups been telling them that she has to keep telling people how hot he is? Haven’t we had enough of hot? One of the funniest moments of the political year was on David Letterman’s show the other night, when two of his stagehands read an “Oprah” transcript of Tipper telling Oprah how passionate Al is. The Clintons used to flaunt their passion in order to prove they have a marriage and not an arrangement. But why do the Gores do it?

Since I appear to be on a rant, why does Bill Clinton keep holding Chelsea’s hand and giving her little smiles? Did you see them in Africa? They even get off Air Force One now holding hands. Chelsea is a grown woman now, and it’s kind of creepy.

But to be fair, all this hand holding started at least as far back as the Reagans, who just liked to hold hands. Some political operative found out people liked it, so when George and Barbara Bush came in they had to do it too. It looked absurd. Every presidential couple has had to do it since. Could we just allow future presidents and their wives not to hold hands in public? Thank you.

*   *   *

Mr. Gore’s people say, and he himself said in his acceptance speech, that this election is not a personality contest. This has led some observers to state that Mr. Gore’s people know Mr. Bush’s personality is better. But Mr. Bush doesn’t have a glittering personality—he doesn’t dazzle us with his good humor or his homespun ways or his self-deprecating charm. I think when Mr. Gore talks about personality he really means character. And Mr. Bush’s character does seem to work for him—he seems transparently a good person, a genuine fellow who isn’t hidden or crafty or sneaky or mean, a person of appropriate modesty. He seems like a normal man, imperfect but normal, and rather nice.

Mr. Gore’s character, on the other hand, is a question mark. In part because of whom he’s been close to the past eight years and how well he fit in with them. In part because of the constant swirl of changes he’s shown us, both in terms of style (the alpha man) and of substance (where he stands on free trade, where he once stood on abortion). A man well into his 50s who changes so much seems odd. And not very solid.

I suppose some of the presidential campaign will come down to which candidate voters feel they can trust personally. And so I have been wondering which candidate would be most likely to lie to me. My impression of Mr. Bush is that he doesn’t lie because if he did he’d feel so guilty and so insecure in his ability to pull it off that his face would redden and his eyes shift and he’d break out in sweat. But Mr. Gore seems to me capable of telling a lie, of spinning just about any fiction, and with utmost conviction, too. This is a talent, but not a good one.

*   *   *

So where do I think the presidential race stands now, as Labor Day approaches?

I think where it stood last spring. Mr. Bush has to prove that he’s solid. People I know whom I trust with good reason have long told me he is. He has a record, which might illustrate his solidity. Maybe he ought to talk about it more. Maybe he should explain how Texas is a triumph, and not a squalid environmental disaster where barefoot children beg for pencils on the way to dilapidated schools. Maybe he could tell us how his philosophy yielded his positions, which have helped his state.

And Mr. Gore, I think, has to show he is good. That’s a tall order, too.

They both have a lot to prove to us. So I guess I think Labor Day really is the final beginning, the real kickoff.

Everyone seems to have something to say about “Survivor,” and I don’t see why I should be any different. It seems to me the popularity of the show rests on two things. The first obviously is that it’s kind of fun, or at least not without interest, to watch sandy people in shorts squabble, scheme and eat rats. The other is that viewers can’t resist making unconscious connections between what they’re seeing on the screen and what they’re doing in their lives.

I don’t mean to sound like Al Gore, but I believe the power of metaphor is alive here. I think the wild popularity of Wednesday night’s show is due in part to people seeing the attempts of the folks on the island to survive as crude expressions of their own attempts to succeed, to achieve lives of satisfaction and meaning. Some of us are tough and assertive, like Susan; some are cold and calculating, like Richard; some resourceful like Rudy or sweet and kind like Sonja or a bit of a mixture, like Kelly. We don’t want to harm anyone, we just want to win. Sometimes we find ourselves caught in the snares of others; sometimes we throw a snare or two ourselves. I think people rooted for the person most like them, or the person most like what they’d like to be.

Last night Susan gave the most memorable speech by an American so far in this political year. Her—I’m paraphrasing—Richard, you’re a snake, and Kelly, you’ve become a rat, and I think we should do as nature intended and let the snake eat the rat is already famous and was talked about in offices across America all morning today. But Richard’s speech—again paraphrasing—I did what I felt I had to do, and I hope you can respect that—and Kelly’s—I’m not proud of all of my actions here, but I was trying to do well while also doing right—were also solid, and memorable.

No one was trying to be eloquent. They were just trying to get their point across. They did. Some politicians could learn from this.

*   *   *

Since this column is called Hillary & Company, I think it’s time to discuss Mrs. Clinton. I have been thinking about her . . .

I have been thinking about a candidate for the U.S. Senate who was a nationally known figure, had never run for office before and was not in fact a native of the state in question. The candidate had been a central figure in a White House scandal and had garnered both a hard-core following of passionate supporters and an army of critics spurred to great effort by great loathing; they said the candidate was using the Senate run as a stepping stone to the presidency.

The candidate had a relatively weak opponent, one who already held state office but whose record was lackluster.

This candidate fought hard, with solid television commercials paid for in part by thousands of donors from outside the state who felt they had a stake in the election. Gales and torrents of money came in to help the candidate, gales and torrents of money sent in, too, to help the opponent. Everyone cared about this one.

The nation watched and waited; the Tuesday in November came. And when it was over, the candidate—Oliver North, a Republican—lost by 50,000 votes of two million cast to his opponent, the incumbent senator, Democrat Charles S. Robb of Virginia. (Final tally: Robb 46%, North 43%.)

*   *   *

Interesting, yes? The North-Robb parallels to Clinton-Lazio aren’t perfect by any means, and we’ll discuss that in a moment, but one thing that is interesting about the North-Robb race is how broadly and deeply hated Ollie North was, and how the passion he inspired determined the election. More than half of Mr. Robb’s own supporters told exit pollers they were voting against Mr. North, not for Mr. Robb. I think it was Richard Nixon who observed that voters are motivated more by dislike than affection, and this race would seem to illustrate the point.

Mr. North was called dangerous, a threat to constitutional governance. When we think of him now, a lot of us see the smiling, thick-eyebrowed man who joshes with Paul Begala on commercials for their TV talk show, “Equal Time.” But a dozen years ago Mr. North was one of the goofier players in a goofy scandal about trying to get Western hostages out of Lebanon by offering U.S. arms to Iranian “moderates” in exchange and dedicating profits from the transaction to the contras of Nicaragua, a ragtag group who fought for and ultimately witnessed the ouster of the communist Sandinista government run by the vain and limited Daniel Ortega.

It was a scandal to be sure, and a disheartening one; America’s president was humiliated, his foreign-policy establishment rocked. To me it seems so long ago, a generation. But only six years ago, Mr. North was still castigated as a monster of history.

Here is a representative critique, from retired army colonel David Hackworth, in a piece published four months before the 1994 election in Playboy: “North’s career shows an undeniable streak of deceit and misuse of the trust of colleagues. . . . [He] would become a threat if he were to succeed in a bid for the Senate. . . . He’s smarmy. . . . He boasts that he was a can-do guy when he was in the White House, but the record spells no-can-do.”

Much the same of course has been said of Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Hackworth foreshadowed another frequent criticism of the first lady by targeting Mr. North’s Northern Virginia home, saying it was not a “plain old farm” as Mr. North maintained, but a million-dollar estate likely funded by campaign donors.

Among many people, Mrs. Clinton is rather roundly despised too. Even her supporters would agree she is a dramatic and divisive figure.

*   *   *

So should she be discouraged by the parallels to the North-Robb race? And should Rick Lazio be encouraged by them? Not necessarily.

True Mr. North and Mrs. Clinton both raised and are raising record sums in their campaigns; and true, out-of-state giving is very high; and true, the rise of both Mr. North and Mrs. Clinton seems to their foes to represent unfortunate trends in our democracy. But the differences between the races are big. For one thing, there was a third candidate in the Robb-North race, Marshall Coleman, a Republican who disapproved of Mr. North and won 11% of the vote. Most of those voters were Republicans, who, had they been denied a third-party option, might have held their nose for Mr. North. If two-thirds of them had done so, he would have won.

Mr. Robb got almost 90% of the black vote and more than half of the women’s vote. Mrs. Clinton hopes to do as well, and still could. Mr. Robb ran as a relatively conservative Democrat in a relatively conservative state; Mrs. Clinton portrays herself as a moderate liberal in a liberal state.

Mr. North didn’t run with the glamour and apparatus of the White House behind him, as Mrs. Clinton does. Mr. North’s bid was complicated when the incumbent Republican U.S. senator from Virginia, John Warner, came out against him and backed Mr. Coleman. Mrs. Clinton has the support of Sen. Charles Schumer and of retiring Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, whose seat she seeks.

But Mr. Moynihan is less enthusiastic than he was a year ago, when he said, “She’ll run, and she’ll win, too.” In a little-noticed-on-these-shores interview with Roy Hattersley, published in the Times of London on Aug. 11, Mr. Moynihan muted his trumpet. Here are the first three paragraphs of Mr. Hattersley’s piece:

At the mention of Hillary Clinton’s name the temperature in Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s office dropped by at least ten degrees. I had naively assumed that, after 24 years on Capitol Hill, and on the point of retirement, the Senior Senator for New York would enthuse about the Democratic Party’s choice as his successor. But he was uncharacteristically non-commital.

“I’m a Democrat. Of course I support her.” That seemed to me a less than enthusiastic endorsement. So I asked him if he had encouraged her to stand. “I was there when she announced that she was standing,” he replied in his strange, hard-edged New York accent. And that was as much enthusiasm as he was prepared to counterfeit.

He was equally half-hearted about Mrs Clinton’s prospects of success. All he would say about the First Lady’s chances of election was “We’ll see.” And, when he warmed to his theme, his faint praise was even more damning: “Somebody had to run. We took Bobby Kennedy from outside and he won. He got fewer votes than LBJ won in New York that year. But he won.”

Sen. Moynihan is a talker, a gentleman of delicious offhand eloquence who likes to share his doubts and enthusiasms, which are uniformly interesting and usually buttressed by historical references. Perhaps he thought his comments might go unnoticed in an English newspaper; perhaps he thought if they were noticed he’d say, “Ah, ah, the newspapermen of Britain are a rather exciteable lot, and I’m sure the interpretations of my comments by this particular fellow reflect that tendency, which is now a tradition. Except of course in the case of the Irish famine, whose ferocity they managed to downplay with startling uniformity.”

But that interview—that’s something Mrs. Clinton perhaps should worry about.

*   *   *

We are deep into August; autumn beckons. But neither Mr. Lazio nor Mrs. Clinton seems to have distinguished himself or herself lately. He has nice soft commercials portraying himself as a warm caring spender of tax dollars. She has commercials portraying herself as a warm and friendly person who’d like us to know her, and to remember that her opponent is a hard-right ideologue.

Neither seems to be breaking through in any big way, not yet. Neither has given a speech half as memorable as Susan’s on “Survivor.” But few in life get to give a speech that memorable, at least in public.

The problem is that neither has given a speech to the tribe quite as persuasive as Richard’s or Kelly’s.

We are waiting, Mr. Lazio. We are waiting, Mrs. Clinton.

*   *   *

I will end on a happy note. I had a moment of great affection for Americans last night as I watched the interminable post-”Survivor” special on CBS. Listening to all of them analyze the show and their parts in it, hearing them discuss the generational differences between the older survivors and the younger ones, I thought: If I were new here I would think modern Americans practical, tough, bright and funny. They have wit and irreverence and insight. They’re really quite hardy. They are the kind of people who could win a war. It was a happy thought.

So is this. In a country with 167 channels, with a fractured marketplace in which we’re all part of a niche, a sliver, a particular demographic at which is aimed particular programming, it was a relief last night to realize half the country was watching the same thing. Blockbusters still bust blocks; “Survivor” is a blockbuster, and every demographic from grandma to kids was watching.

It is good when these seemingly small cultural moments occur, and when we’re all talking about the same thing the next day. These things help hold us together, like the Evening News did in the 1960s and “Roots” did in the ‘70s. Or like big earthquakes in California, and murderous hurricanes back east. They are things we can refer back to, commonalties we share.

Politics does this too, when it works. It can hold us together with interest so that even the least engaged of us manage every few years to work up an opinion and vote.

This is good. It can make you feel gratitude you don’t fully understand.

I left the Philadelphia convention two weeks ago thinking George Bush would probably win. I left Los Angeles fairly certain of it.

In tone and feel the Philadelphia convention was like that of 1980, the Reagan convention of spectacular unity in the face of high stakes. Philadelphia too was unified, and not only by hunger. The Christian Coalition was over here and happy and the Log Cabin Republicans were over there and happy; peace reigned, primarily for two reasons.

One was that Republicans have been concussed to a degree still not fully appreciated by Bill Clinton, whom they think of not only as probably disturbed but strikingly unconcerned about our nation’s security (the nuclear secrets gone, the president uninterested in moving toward protecting us from nuclear attack, etc.). Modern Republicans have never felt this way about an American president, and it shocks them still. It has also concentrated their minds, making internal battles seem secondary and self-indulgent.

The other reason is that the overwhelming majority of Republicans have come to respect George W. Bush, and get what he’s about. He is the next step after Ronald Reagan. Mr. Reagan spent his time awakening an economy in deep REM sleep and beating back Soviet communism. He knocked down walls. Now Bush the younger will spend his time building, doing the unfinished business of greater prosperity and freedom.

So that was the Republican mix in Philadelphia, antipathy plus agreement. Not to mention the hunger that comes from eight years out in the presidential cold. But that time, the convention seemed to suggest, was spent rethinking, bringing up new talent, questioning old ways. When I saw Condoleezza Rice address the convention as the expected next head of the National Security Council, saw Rep. J.C. Watts (R., Okla.), saw so many other fresh talents, I thought of what Andre Malraux told Whittaker Chambers after reading the galleys of “Witness”: “You did not come back from hell with empty hands.”

*   *   *

Los Angeles was different, though equally revealing. The Democrats have returned from heaven with empty hands. Schedules slipped, Joe Lieberman was brought to heel by Maxine Waters, the perpetually enraged California congresswoman who emerged as a party powerbroker, and the best speech of the week, the cleverest and most worthy of deconstruction, was not that of the presidential nominee but of the president, who had a chance to boost Mr. Gore through anecdote and example, and did not.

Gone was the discipline and cleverness of the Clinton era. During big speeches the podium area was crowded with donors and party hacks hugging each other, throwing high fives and blocking the view of the delegates massed to the right and left of the stage. The night of the Gore speech I watched two little black kids happily tossing Lieberman signs in the air as they waited for the candidate. That’s better than the Republicans, I thought, little kids with front-row seats. Then Gore came bounding through the crowd and, pivoting like a man who’d been fully briefed on where his marks were, squatted down to the children and patted their heads. The kids weren’t just props; when Mr. Gore was through, they were obvious props.

Mr. Gore’s speech all but announced the party was returning to habits and assumptions that were not just pre-Clinton but pre-Carter, offering an estimated $1 trillion in new programs. The pose was populist but promised to be problematic: If you’re going to wage class warfare you’d better do it with the passion of George Wallace or Pat Buchanan, and you probably shouldn’t do it at all when the biggest demographic shift in America is the number of new investors.

*   *   *

Bill Clinton was like a big magnet floating over the conventions of ‘92 and ‘96, and whichever way he moved all the pieces of iron filing followed. But in Los Angeles, Mr. Clinton disappeared, and took his magnetism with him. All the pieces of metal on the floor went this way and that and finally slid to the left, just as they had before 1992.

Al Gore is not a magnet. It isn’t just the lack of shades-wearing, sax-playing charm. Mr. Gore lacks the confidence of a great man, or a psychopath, that he should be adored and followed. He is full of doubts and constantly shifts shapes. And he doesn’t have 12 years of loss behind him to help him spur his party. Mr. Clinton played savior, but now the party has already been saved. Now it’s smug.

*   *   *

This is what I realized in L.A.: It wasn’t a newly unified Democratic party that produced a victor named Bill Clinton, it was Mr. Clinton who produced a unified party. He unified them through their hunger, which he matched with his own.

But the changes he brought were not serious, and so not lasting. They were not grounded in the desire to change but in the desire to win. His party could now change back so quickly, could pivot back to the past, because that, now, seems the way to win, at least according to Mr. Gore’s strategists. Clintonian moderation was as evanescent as a Clintonian promise or a Clintonian statement: It was just meant to get through the moment.

It was said of Jimmy Carter when he left the presidency that he’d left no footprints. I thought Bill Clinton was a real bigfoot, he left a real impression, but in Los Angeles it looked as if his footprints too had been washed away in the tide.

*   *   *

The Democrats in Los Angeles also showed another attitudinal change. They acted as if they deserve to lead, not as if they’d better hustle to win leadership. They remind me of the Republicans in ‘92. They seem to have lost their edge, and lost a lot of the bright young men and women of the War Room. A lot of them are gone, some of them broken by the Clinton experience, some in television and consulting. The Democrats’ talent coffers are depleted.

In the 1970s and ‘80s the Democrats weren’t as good as the Republicans at the stagecraft of conventions; they didn’t approach the level of sophistication of the Reagan era. By 1992, however, they’d learned how to have a slicker, smarter convention production, and in ‘96 they blew the Republicans away in stagecraft. They even invented a new art of campaign film biography, with the brilliant Linda Bloodworth-Thomason creating a classic of political propaganda with “The Boy From Hope.”

But this year in Philadelphia the Republicans beat the Democrats at stagecraft, with a message of clarity that broke through the screen: We are diverse and young and moving forward, breaking out of the old era.

*   *   *

There will be dramas in the coming months; it will not be a quiet campaign. There may be government shutdowns and fierce debates and amazingly negative advertising. It isn’t over. But I think I saw the modern Democratic Party begin to crumble again in L.A., and I think I saw the modern Republican Party being born.

Now the campaign proceeds at greater speed and with greater urgency. At the end of both conventions, a hunch. If the Clinton-Gore apparatus is facing its end, its death throes won’t be pretty. Some living things quietly die when badly wounded, but many animals are most dangerous when most endangered.

Al Gore’s acceptance speech was a rhetorical failure and, in my view, a strategic blunder of significant proportions.

It failed as rhetoric not, as his defenders quickly claimed, because it lacked “poetry” and “song,” but because it lacked thought. It was relentlessly banal and formulaic, its sound shaped not by the simple speech of the honest man but by a reflexive politico-bureaucratese: “The future should belong to everyone in this land. . . . We’re entering a new time. We’re electing a new president. . . . In our democracy, the future is not something that just happens to us, it’s something that we make for ourselves together.”

It was boilerplate boob-bait punctuated by tired vows. It has been called specific but was only declarative—specific only in the way a shopping list is. Would that seasoning, even just a bit of pepper, had been on the list.

It seemed written by a committee of second-tier communications aides, but Mr. Gore says he wrote it, and we must take him at his word. It certainly didn’t have much Shrum in it. I had imagined reading it with reporters and producers when the text was released before it was delivered and, finding a word that’s just right or a passage in which thought was linked to feeling, shouting with delight, “Shrummy! Page three, graf seven, Shrum strikes!” But Bob Shrum, the fabled Democratic speechwriter, did not strike—or, if he did, it was perhaps in the second way in which the speech failed, its seeming strategic miscalculation.

Mr. Gore’s speech seemed to aim purely at his base, at the left of his party and the more leftward part of the electorate. The text hit every liberal pleasure point—from creation of a national health care service to affirmative action to no school vouchers to a woman’s right to abortion to a federal pre-school daycare system to class warfare featuring greedy polluting nicotine-head oil-company gangsters vs. decent people like you and me.

It was unleavened by any hint of doubt and unshaded by the assumption that decent people can disagree. It was, in short, amazingly . . . retro. It sounded not at all like what one might have expected—a post-Clinton era rallying cry informed by the insights of the Democratic Leadership Council, and brought to a new level in the new century.

Instead it sounded like Walter Mondale in 1984, or Teddy Kennedy in 1980, or even Hubert Humphrey in 1968. It sounded like something untouched by the history of the past 15 years or so. It sounded like something Rep. Maxine Waters would like. It was playing to the base in a way that seems so narrow, so constricting and unsophisticated that it has left me full of questions I did not expect to be asking at the end of the Democratic National Convention.

Why would Al Gore on his big night play to the left of his party, and ignore most of the assumptions and views of the middle—of independents and Republicans who are still looking around, of McCain people and young professionals?

Because he had to forestall the threat of Ralph Nader on the left and Buchanan on the blue collar-protectionist right?

Because he believes he doesn’t really have his base, even now, and must win it?

Because he thinks he can, in the coming weeks and months, pivot to the center, hoping no one will remember his acceptance speech? Was the speech therefore brilliantly boring in that it effectively communicated to the left in such an unmemorable way that no normal person could be expected to remember any of it? Was it deliberately boring as a tactical matter—that is, did he anticipate that America would turn it off 14 minutes in, while the left would like it and remember it?

Or, as some are asking, does he think he’s going to lose, and if you’re going to lose you might as well lose standing for something? But if he thought he was going to lose, why did he choose Joe Lieberman?

In the entire speech Mr. Gore mentioned Bill Clinton only once, at the very beginning of his speech. He used the word “future” 12 times. By contrast, in his 1988 acceptance speech Vice President George Bush mentioned Ronald Reagan three times by name and devoted several paragraphs to a discussion of the Reagan-Bush administration’s accomplishments. Mr. Bush admired and respected Mr. Reagan and sought to be associated with him.

Clearly in this speech Mr. Gore sought to break from Mr. Clinton, and he at least achieved that. All of those wholesome family films and speeches by family members conveyed the message: I am not a weirdo like Clinton. But to break with Mr. Clinton, was it necessary also to break with the DLC insights Mr. Gore once cared so much for, and to return to the old Mondale-era sound and reality of the Democratic Party?

I don’t know the answers to these questions, and I suppose time will reveal them—or whether the questions were the right ones.

But I must tell you that right after the speech I did some talking-head commentary and tried to express my disappointment, and was told by pols and pundits alike that “this is the real Gore,” and that we should feel some satisfaction that he showed us who he is. Well, if that’s who Mr. Gore is, he’s a loser.