A Long Time Ago: Hey W, This Bud's For You! Hendrik Hertzberg's Regrets
It's 4 a.m. on Friday morning, less than 12 hours after the revelation that George W. Bush was arrested 24 years ago in Maine on a DUI charge. Last night, the media was in a frenzy: Campaign Meltdown? Gore Dirty Tricks? An election that the Vice President will now carry by winning the Electoral College while losing the popular vote?
Obviously, it's a distraction Bush didn't need, especially given the partisanship of the pundits, who can barely hide their glee as they stroke their chins while debating the issue. At this point, who knows if it was a Gore plant who leaked the arrest story to a reporter in Portland? I suspect it won't change the results of Tuesday's balloting. Bush has been forthright?almost to the point of sanctimony?about giving up the bottle 14 years ago.
Will it energize Gore's lackluster base? I doubt it, especially since a low turnout is expected on Tuesday. However, it could be a deciding factor among those independent voters who still haven't committed to either candidate. On the one hand, there's the suburban mom who might be turned off by what will be spun as Bush's lack of disclosure of an incident that happened a generation ago. Then again, that voter's next-door neighbor might be thinking: "Bush gave up drinking. I wish my husband would as well."
As for the working men in Michigan and Pennsylvania who are torn between loyalty to their unions (advantage Gore) and the right to own a gun (advantage Bush), I can't imagine that a drinking infraction will matter one bit. It might even have the same humanizing effect as had Bush's unintentionally canny remark over Labor Day weekend about The New York Times' Adam Clymer being a "a major-league asshole."
Unfortunately for Bush, lost in this trivial muddle was Ross Perot's endorsement of him last night on, naturally, Larry King Live. Frankly, that was more of a stunner than an alcohol-related arrest from the 70s, given the animus Perot has in the past shown to anyone named Bush. As Perot said, drawing an obvious comparison to Clinton and Gore: "Here's a man who I have never heard anybody criticize once for improper conduct as governor, for the improper taking of funds, for payoffs, for improprieties in the governor's mansion."
Also shunted to the side was another example of Clinton screwing up Gore's campaign. (At this point, since he's been relegated to campaigning in Arkansas and black communities, I don't think the President's once-a-week slip-ups are unconscious. After Gore loses, I can't wait for Clinton's bitter chapter in his memoirs about this fall's election.) As if the Esquire cover shot?Clinton spreading his legs in a Monica-I'm-All-Yours pose?and accompanying self-pitying interview weren't bad enough, in California yesterday the Lame Duck gave a cocky answer to a radio host who said he wished the Arkansan could run for a third term. "But you can get the next best thing," Clinton replied. "I tell you we've got to win this election and I feel very strongly that we're going to win it if our folks vote."
Notice that giant "if."
Meanwhile, The New York Times is downright hysterical. Thank God Arthur Sulzberger isn't anywhere near the "Red Button." In a down-in-the-cesspool editorial on Friday, the paper blasted Ralph Nader one more time, on this occasion for the Green Party candidate's correct assessment that it would be political suicide for the GOP to overturn Roe v. Wade. The editorial reads: "This is male chauvinism carried to a new extreme. The 60 million American women of childbearing age may see their constitutional right to abortion put at risk because of Ralph Nader's unilateral declaration that the makeup of the Supreme Court does not really matter to him. You can bet he would be jumping up and down if it were his constitutional protections and his physical health and his medical autonomy that were being put at risk." To lend some perspective, it's worth mentioning that Antonin Scalia, the conservative Supreme Court justice whom Bush admires, was confirmed 98-0 by a Democrat-controlled Senate.
The Times further deludes readers by claiming the "polls are deceptive at this point." When every major poll has Bush ahead of Gore at this point in the campaign, how is that deceptive? Then, against all the dominant wisdom, the editorial continues: "The polls cannot measure another advantage that Mr. Gore could enjoy on Election Day, and that is the potential for a heavier turnout by Democrats than Republicans."
Such lunacy in New York's largest newspaper is maddening, but there is a silver lining: The Times has so disgraced itself in the past six months by acting as Al Gore's campaign manager that its reputation, so unimpeachable for generations, is in full crack-up mode.
Hendrik Hertzberg's Regrets
The following internal New Yorker e-mail was leaked to New York Press on Wednesday, Nov. 1.
It reads: "There's some concern that because Gore has NY wrapped up, turnout will be especially low & pro-lazio. I know this is mostly Nader territory, so for those who find a hillary/gore plug a bit 'square,' I apologize."
My immediate assumption was that the memo was written by either Hendrik Hertzberg, a New Yorker senior editor, or David Remnick, the magazine's editor. Upon investigation, sources assured me neither of the men was responsible for it. However, considering Hertzberg's over-the-top deification of Al Gore in his "Comment" for the Nov. 6 edition, he was the number-one suspect for this odd note to New Yorker colleagues.
Before dissecting the longtime liberal's pre-mortem of Election Day?Hertzberg, like most of the media intelligentsia, has gradually realized that Gore, one of the Best & the Brightest, is going to lose on Tuesday?it helps to put his resume in context.
A man pushing 60, Hertzberg was one of those baby-boomer journalists who were judiciously wild & crazy back in the 60s, contributing to underground newspapers, participating in various political protests and enjoying the sexual and pharmaceutical/herbal freedom of the time before growing up and getting into the good-government racket. Hertzberg was a speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, and then became a Beltway journalist, completing tours of duty at Martin Peretz's New Republic. He's of the Michael Kinsley/Sidney Blumenthal/Joe Klein political school: after 12 years of the dreaded Reagan/Bush regime in the White House, all three were tickled when two of their own, Bill and Hillary Clinton, won the '92 election.
Blumenthal is reprehensible in the extreme: I may not care for the others' writing, but that's just a matter of opinion. In the '92 campaign he smeared President Bush in The New Republic, questioning his World War II record (an extraordinarily smarmy bit of scut work for Clinton, who successfully dodged service in Vietnam, but didn't have the guts to simply say he was opposed to the war) before graduating to The New Yorker, where, as Oval Office suck-up, he extolled as an act of genius every decision Clinton made. Eventually, Blumenthal made his self-abasing sycophancy official and went to work for the President and his wife.
Kinsley, who edits Slate, is a worm whom I'd rather not discuss.
Klein has had a successful career. A former reporter for Boston's now-defunct Real Paper, he wrote a book about Woody Guthrie, worked as the chief political correspondent at New York?he was perhaps the first journalist to anoint Clinton in '92?and then covered the same beat for Newsweek. He made an enormous amount of money for his excellent novel Primary Colors, which was first released under the pseudonym Anonymous. It was a terrific marketing coup, although Klein pushed his denials an inning too far and lost some credibility when he finally fessed up to writing the book. He's currently stationed at The New Yorker, where he writes mostly tepid political commentaries. He's clearly lost the juice for the job and it shows.
Hertzberg, in the last several years, has bounced around The New Yorker, with rotating titles, and recently has anchored the "Comment" essay that kicks off each issue's "Talk of the Town."
So, back to Hertzberg's Nov. 6 piece. Unlike reporters at The New York Times, who try, albeit unsuccessfully, to hide their partisanship in their front-page "news" stories, Hertzberg is fully candid about being a Gore supporter and believes that Bush is a moron. That puts him in the company of probably 90 percent of the Beltway media, a squiggly group that's had a lot of smug fun ridiculing the Texas Governor's malapropisms and less-than-impressive ability to read from a teleprompter. No doubt on the afternoon of Nov. 7, when the exit polls are released, the gallows humor will begin, and the stoutest of this arrogant coterie will buck up the troops by predicting how much fun they'll have at cocktail parties in the next four years, trashing the new president's latest verbal gaffes. Better than Dan Quayle!
But Hertzberg is so off-base on a number of points, it's worth a look just to see what the reading public can look forward to.
He writes that Gore is more fiscally responsible than Bush because "he proposes to spend somewhat less of the chimerical surplus," and is "more socially responsible" because he'll spend more money on schools. In addition, Gore, according to Hertzberg, is more "egalitarian" since he'd "ameliorate inequalities of wealth and income while [Bush] would exacerbate them."
I suppose it depends on what speech of Gore's you listen to, in what battleground state, but his Big Government plans to throw money at the country's problems rival LBJ's. It's inconceivable that any journalist who isn't a "moron" would actually endorse Gore's ludicrous education plans, which will be in lockstep with the teachers' unions and result in even more kids growing up with the same reading and writing skills as their barely literate teachers, or as the Times' Bob Herbert.
Hertzberg's claim that Gore would "ameliorate inequalities of wealth and income" doesn't really sound, in all fairness, like what the Vice President is proposing. Gore is promising tax cuts for the middle class (just as he and Clinton promised in '92 but never got around to); I don't think he intends to implement the ideas of Norman Thomas or Eugene Debs.
Hertzberg says that Bush's idea of withdrawing American troops from the Balkans would "have the effect of weakening the Western alliance and America's role within it." I doubt it. It was Clinton who couldn't maintain the international coalition that President Bush achieved during the Gulf War. With several of the same foreign policy advisers, including Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, working in the younger Bush's administration, it's a fair guess that the U.S. will have better relations with our allies. (Save with Britain's Clinton-clone Tony Blair, who very likely will be toppled by the Tories in that country's next election.)
Gore is touted for his 24 years of public service as a government official, which, Hertzberg says, has been "distinguished." That's debatable. Gore was never very popular among his congressional colleagues. No one cottons to a teacher's pet, and no one appreciates being spoken to as if he or she is eight years old. Whether you're a U.S. senator, an accountant or a candlestick maker, Gore's obnoxious persona is off-putting. Hertzberg minimizes Bush's success with the Texas Rangers, belittling professional baseball as "not exactly a cutting-edge industry."
Could be, but is a career in the U.S. government "cutting-edge"?
As for Hertzberg's claim that Gore has perhaps been the "best" vice president "in the country's history," that's a statement both untrue and creepily reminiscent of the day Clinton was impeached and the Veep attested to his boss' assured legacy of greatness. Gore's been an awful vice president: he's defended Clinton even after he admitted to perjury; he got caught up in criminal fundraising activities; and he shamelessly used his family's tragedies for political gain. As for Gore being hoodwinked by crooked Russians...well, that's just another reason to hope that a miracle doesn't occur and he gets elected on Tuesday.
Gore, according to Hertzberg, showed "political courage" by voting to support the Gulf War. Whether that was "courage" in bucking the Democratic establishment, or self-aggrandizement, as former Sen. Alan Simpson has insisted, is anybody's guess. But Gore's alleged brokering of his vote for a primetime speech on the Senate floor isn't a secret. I'd say that Bush showed far more "political courage" in opposing the GOP's right-wing stance on immigration. When former California Gov. Pete Wilson (and naturally Pat Buchanan) was exploiting the issue, claiming that immigrants were leeching the United States' riches, Bush loudly rejected that xenophobic stance.
Finally, Hertzberg laments that if Bush defeats Gore?popularity over competence?then the "transformation of the Presidency of the United States into the presidency of the student council will be complete."
Rip Van Hertzberg, where have you been these past eight years? Bill Clinton and Al Gore, from decidedly different backgrounds, both wanted to be president of the United States since the time they could walk. Clinton's life has been a permanent campaign. Gore was groomed for the office by his overbearing parents. One of the defining characteristics of the failed Clinton-Gore administration is that the pair did act as if they were in high school.
Bush might've come to politics late in life, but after the Clinton-Gore tenure, that's a blessing, not a curse.
November 3
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