Debate 'n' Switch: Bush and Gore Miscalculate

Last week's battle came up because Gore had promised to debate Bush "anytime, anywhere." Bush tried to push Gore into a debate this Tuesday on NBC with Tim Russert, and Gore balked, saying that Bush had to agree to the Commission debates first. In doing so, he gave the lie to his "anytime, anywhere" promise, and Bush quickly bought ads in a couple dozen states to drive this point home. But it didn't seem to do Bush much good, because the general public sensed (correctly) that Bush was urging a talk-show format only because he was scared witless of appearing in regular debates with Gore.

What's horrifying about these developments is that they show that neither candidate seems to know his own interest.

Bush is right to say that the Commission debates are not debates: they're dueling monologues, which favor the feel-good candidate with the easiest manner and the best smile?not the candidate who has the most gravitas and the best command of the issues. George Bush Sr. got beaten to a pulp in this format. But this year, Bush Jr. is the Clinton candidate. It's he who should be running toward this Oprahfied charade, Gore who should be fleeing it.

Tim Russert, by contrast?whom Bush professes to want to debate with, and whose Meet the Press Gore dismisses as "a talk show"?has made it his Life's Mission to cut through bullshit. When Russert asks Bush about the numbers in his tax plan, he won't be content with, "Well, Tim, the American people..." Gore, by contrast, would be in like Flynn in that format. You can almost predict his lines: "Well, Tim, as you know, if you amortize the interest on the national debt, recognizing the differential between the average rate of stock-market return, which is 6-point-2-7 percent and that of T-bills, which is..." And blah-blah-blah.

It was his desire for a Larry King appearance that really led the press to beat up on Bush. The St. Petersburg Times, for instance, wrote: "Softball questions from Larry King. On cable. That's George W. Bush's recipe for the ideal presidential debates." But Bush is a fool if he wants to debate Gore on Larry King. That show is problematic for Bush in the opposite way to Russert: he disappears from all the debates he holds?which allows the candidates to go at it mano-a-mano. I don't share the general opinion that Gore is a good debater. It was gratifying to see Jim Fallows, in his comprehensive Atlantic article on Gore's forensic skills, come down on the side of Everyone with Eyes to See, and state unequivocally that Dan Quayle had Gore for lunch during their debate in 1992. But Gore did have a terrific debate with Perot over NAFTA. Why? It's not that Gore was good at responding to King's questions. It's that he was devastating in posing his own to Perot. ("Name one thing in the treaty you would change!") That kind of argument is the Bushies' worst nightmare.

Bush is not going to get out of debating Gore. So it's Bush who should want the Commission debates, and Gore who should be willing to go on Russert and King. What's most disturbing is that both candidates are exercising terrible judgment.

Gore, Blimey The Gore campaign is getting more and more sensible. The one thing Gore did last week that most improved his position was to establish his "rainy day fund" of $300 billion. The most dangerous thing about Gore's budget plans is that they are ridiculously rosy. He has a point when he says it's hard to see how Dubya will pay for those tax cuts he's selling, but it's a takes-one-to-know-one point: Gore, too, is promising goodies he can't pay for. Now, $300 billion doesn't come close to bridging the gap between what Gore has promised, and what he can afford. But it's a step in the right direction. I don't always agree with my boss at The Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol, but one thing he has down stone-solid is the Lieberman effect. At the end of the day, there really was no one besides Lieberman who could have sundered Gore quite so effectively from Bill Clinton's moral bad odor. (Granted, you could have made a case for Bob Kerrey of Nebraska.) Bill makes the case that Gore used to trail Bush by 15 or 20 points on questions like, "Who would provide better moral leadership for the nation?" Now Gore is winning in that bracket by 44-37.

Assignment Desk Mickey Kaus' "Kausfiles" column?which you can get by logging onto Slate?has come up with one of the great journalistic innovations of our day: the "Assignment Desk." During the Republican primaries, Kaus, realizing there was no way he could write up all the articles on McCain that came to mind, suggested four or five topics to reporters with time on their hands. I love this idea. So much so that I'd like to launch my own Assignment Desk. Let's start with Abbott Laboratories. I'd like to write a piece on Abbott Laboratories. The problem is, I don't exactly know what Abbott Laboratories does. But the stock has come up in a couple of political stories this week.

Mike Ciresi, the superrich trial lawyer who's planning to convert the hundreds of millions he won in tobacco litigation into a Minnesota Senate seat, laid into former state auditor Mark Dayton, who's running against him for the Democrat-Farmer-Labor nomination. Dayton had a $500,000 position in Abbott Labs, which is apparently a no-no, since all pharmaceutical stocks are bad. But it emerged later in the week that Ciresi had $2100 of Abbott shares himself. He described his accountants, whom he blames for purchasing the dastardly stocks, as "profusely apologetic."

What is it about Abbott shares that makes them so hard to detect in one's portfolio, and so hard to unload once detected?