Debate by Danny McBride, 784words

They came. We saw. I snoozed. The Battle in Boston? How about Boredom in Boston?

Presidential contenders George W Bush and Al Gore have completed round one of their mock-debate-TV-show. Lord help us. These are our choices?

Well, yes, I did know that already. But as the election gets closer and it becomes all too painfully clear that one of these two is going to be in our living rooms day and night for the next four years, you don’t know whether to cry or throw up.

We have two-hundred-and-sixty million people in this country and this is the best we can do? Of course, anybody REALLY qualified for the job won’t take it anymore. There will be no more Lincolns or Jeffersons, or Teddy OR Franklin Roosevelts.

As a New Englander, I hate to pick on Franklin Pierce, as he was a local boy who went all the way, but he is at the level of about all we can hope for from now on.

Like fifty million of the rest of you I watched to see if Bush would turn and call Gore a major league- -rhymes with bass pole- -bad name. Or if Gore would have memorized the entire Roledex of the United Nations Ambassadors and Assistants to include "My good friend The Emir of GooseSquat and I were talking just the other day about the oil surplus depletion allowance index, and how much it would mean for both our countries if we were to revamp the whole process into one user-friendly pocket guidebook we could all understand." And Bush would be trying to picture in his mind’s eye where this country was on a world map and if he’d have to find it.

True to form, Al looks like the kid who always raised his hand in class just as the bell was ringing to remind the teacher she forgot to assign homework and whine "Can we do extra credit?" And Bush looks like a deer caught in headlights scared stiff that he’s going to be called on and he hasn’t read the chapter and doesn’t even know which chapter he was supposed to have read.

The disappointment of this season’s debates isn’t the answers- -Bush would "hug someone" whose house had just been washed away in a flood, and Gore would invite the Russians in for coffee to solve world problems- -No- -The disappointment is the questions and the topics for discussion. An unwritten rule of these "debates", if you want to call them that, is the absence of so-called "third rail" issues.

The very day of this debate, the fighting in the Mideast was still the lead story in most papers and they NEVER TALKED ABOUT IT. NOTHING. Bush has been frying people left and right on Death Row in Texas, including a retarded teenager, but no mention of the morality of such action. So many issues that REALLY affect us all just will not be brought up.

Instead, topics like education and prescription drugs dominate. Is anybody against education or medication for those who need it? Bush would teach everyone to read and write. He’d even go first. Gore would make sure sick people got their medicine. He’d even bring it over to your house. These aren’t REAL issues. These are TV issues. They have agreed to leave out the stuff that might actually get people stirred up, and just talk simply about things everybody already agrees on. This isn’t debating. It’s appalling. No wonder their poll numbers are still the same fuzzy numbers they were before the show. Remember Quemoy and Matsu? There’s no such thing these days. I wish someone had just said "Where’s the beef?" for old times’ sake.

Jim Lehrer of The Newshour on PBS lobbed such softball questions that the candidates could pretty much rehash their campaign boiler plate without actually answering any hardball questions. Lehrer explained in a broadcast interview the morning of the debate that his role was to stay out of the way and not be prosecutorial, the way, say, Tim Russert of NBC’s Meet The Press was during the Hillary Clinton-Rick Lazio debate.

But this format, devised by the campaigns themselves, does nothing to help us watch either of these men think on their feet, scary as that thought is. Bush might stall by asking to have the question repeated while he thinks of who to call for his lifeline (Alan Greenspan, Poppy) and Gore would concoct more fiction about what he’s done and where he’s been ("After Neil Armstrong and I got back from the moon that first time, I thought it would be a good idea to redesign the NASA space suit, which I did while on a trip to Gobookastan to renegotiate our fluorocarbon treaty.").

No wonder they don’t want Ralph Nader anywhere near them. He might actually tell the honest to goodness truth and have actual factual answers.

Either way you look at it, we are not about to elect a pillar of dignity to the White House. Your choice is probably going to leave you wishing for a Clinton third term.

Where’s Lloyd Bentsen when you need him? "I knew Bill Clinton. And you’re no Bill Clinton."

I’m with Admiral Stockdale: "Where am I?"

-30-

Return to Catalogue