There is a low road through Pennsylvania, too. These days it runs along the airwaves and phone lines and on cable television, and it was clogged with bile. Unapologetically–“We’re not backing down,” said a top Gore aide–Democratic operatives flooded the state with automated phone calls, telling seniors that Bush was a pollution-loving, coldhearted cad whose Social Security plan would put their “current benefits” at risk. Officially and unofficially, Republicans responded in kind. One GOP freelancer in Texas aired an ad–vastly amplified by news coverage–accusing the Clinton-Gore administration of selling military secrets to the Chinese. Another GOP group, this one with closer party ties, ran an ad using footage of Nader attacking Gore–without noting Nader’s even harsher attacks on Bush. “Regular” ads were nasty enough. Democrats continued to portray Bush’s Social Security savings plan as a broken promise in the making; Republicans responded with a spot asking: “Why does Al Gore say one thing when the truth is another?”
America was invented in Philadelphia, saved at Gettysburg and ushered into the industrial age in Pittsburgh. But what would Franklin, Lincoln or Carnegie think? The theme song for this campaign isn’t “Yankee Doodle” or “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” it’s “Who Let the Dogs Out?” With a week to go, neither candidate had truly caught fire, and for their sins they were being hectored by Nader, a media-savvy scourge who may just hold the balance of electoral power between princelings of the baby boom.
High road or low, there is no margin for error. In the new NEWSWEEK Poll–and in most others–Bush was inching ahead last week, but he hadn’t opened up enough of a lead in the Electoral College count for his handlers in Austin, Texas, to feel very comfortable. Among registered voters Bush led 45-42 percent; he enjoyed a wider lead, 49-41 percent, among likely voters. Most counts put the candidates with roughly 200 electoral votes each, with the remaining 130 or so up for grabs in about 15 states. They include several–Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania–in which the Nader vote could be decisive. In Austin, meetings were earlier, more frequent and shorter. In Nashville, Gore staffers tried to break the tension with daily comedy skits. “This thing could go down to Oregon and Washington on election night,” said Bill Daley, Gore’s campaign chairman.
Whether or not Campaign 2000 turns out to be the closest since 1960–or 1980–it’s already earned a place among the least illuminating and inspiring of presidential contests. The main protagonists are calculating men who grew up in politics–and learned to be cautious in the family business. Both are media-conscious to a fault, and wary of being seen as ideologues on the edges of their parties. They’ve been desperate to avoid mistakes, and, for the most part, they have done so. But while they produced a campaign without a single hideous gaffe, they also produced one without a single, deeply resonant speech or moment. The highlight reel of pivotal plays could well consist largely of sighs and smirks, verbal slip-ups and orange makeup and kisses for Tipper and Oprah.
The last two elections that were this close in the final hours (1960 and 1980) were seen–even at the time–as watersheds. Kennedy and Nixon embodied a rising generation, and that campaign gave us a new machinery of politics, based on television, personal wealth and charisma. Two decades later Ronald Reagan rose to Washington on the crest of a conservative movement that had been gathering force since the founding of the Young Americans for Freedom in 1962.
But this election seems less a watershed than a low-water mark. There undoubtedly are vast, global challenges ahead, but whatever they are, this campaign did little to unearth or debate them. The economy is slowing, not yet ominously, but noticeably. Yet despite hysterical talk of “vast differences,” the campaign has seemed largely to be about accountancy and actuarial tables: Who will make the seniors of 2015 more comfy? Whose tax plan will funnel more money into your pocket? If not about dry numbers, the enterprise (indirectly) has been about something equally uninspiring: Bill Clinton’s personal life, as Gore and Bush competed humorlessly to demonstrate marital fidelity and fatherly instincts. They may set a record for cloying moments. Prosperity, it turns out, is good for America but bad for serious politics.
In the meantime, the prevailing machinery of politics may be collapsing of its own weight. The ever-escalating advertising budgets have canceled each other out. “There’s so much stuff on the air I’m not sure how much of it matters anymore,” says Daley, who grew up in a time and place–his father’s Chicago–when manpower mattered most. Voters increasingly are refusing to cooperate with (or lying to) polltakers; survey numbers have gyrated absurdly this year–which may be just the effect the “respondents” intend. Political parties, unions and other interest groups (from NARAL to the NRA) will spend record sums on GOTV–“get out the vote.” But the more they spend, the harder it is to get results. The celebrated GOTV innovation this year is the “automated call,” a form of manufactured grass-roots passion–and a melancholy symbol of the year.
Still, somebody has to win, and the candidates soldiered on. Nader had a noticeable little breeze at his back. That’s bad news for Gore, since the vice president is clearly the second choice of most Nader supporters. Nader raised $5 million from last February until two weeks ago. His aides claim that he raised $1 million the last two weeks alone. He’s never held office, but is hardly a political naif. He has almost singlehandedly put a half-dozen laws on the federal books, and is now being advised by one of the cagey consultants who transformed Jesse Ventura from a wrestler in a feather boa to the governor of Minnesota. That ad man, Bill Hillsman, has cut a new spot (it’s a takeoff on the popular “what I want to be when I grow up” ad by Monster.com). It hasn’t aired yet, but in the meantime Nader ads are on radio in Oregon, Washington and a handful of other states. After one failed attempt through an intermediary, the Gore campaign has steered clear of trying to talk Nader out of the race, or talk to him at all. “That would blow up in our face,” said one top Gore adviser. Gore’s hope: if the race is tight, half of Nader’s supporters will peel away to the veep.
Nader’s just one of Gore’s problems. He wins the argument on Social Security, health care and prescription drugs, but that may not be enough. If Americans aren’t too cynical to vote, they are in a Diogenean mood, and Gore’s numbers on honesty and forthrightness lag far behind Bush’s. More important, the record run of economic growth may be hurting Gore, not helping him, by uncoupling the presidency from the notion of economic stewardship. By 31-17 percent, voters think Gore is better able to keep the economy growing than Bush. But nearly half (47 percent) think it’ll do fine no matter who is president.
On the campaign trail late last week, Gore’s growing frustration with his task seemed almost palpable. He was shouting himself hoarse as he beseeched voters to yield up their hearts, but at rallies in West Virginia and in Pittsburgh he seemed to have trouble even getting their attention. GOP spending in California has forced him to campaign there this week. For the most part, however, Gore will crisscross the Great Lakes states, hoping that union-sponsored GOTV drives will work there. He’ll return to Florida, too, where he is hoping for an upset in a Bush-family backyard.
Heading into the final week, Bush was in a somewhat better spot, and he seemed to be reminding himself not to count the chickens. The GOP had more money to spend and, other than Florida, he had no GOP turf to protect. His aides walled him off from the press a month ago after his “subliminable” performance on a tarmac in Orlando, Fla. Almost plaintively, Bush stared into the press cabin of his plane looking for someone to tease, or yak with privately. Reporters told him to forget it–unless he was willing to talk on the record. He declined. His handlers planned to finish this week with a series of policy speeches reprising his “compassionate conservative” themes of the year. But they were taking no chances. The GOP ads would continue to attack Gore personally, and Bush would do the same, as necessary. There is a high road, but no one is sure that it leads to the White House.
