It's hip to quip: Assaulting Al and Smirking George

Mike Spahn

Pray for Rain

With just precious few days to go before election day and even fewer voters left undecided, I feel to take this opportunity to highlight a few of my favorite moments from the past few weeks in an effort to help those all-important undecideds to make a decision.

My one disclaimer is that while I present these quips on an inherently biased page, I will try to keep it a little even handed, regardless of my own affiliations. I will, however, probably fail.

This race for president of the United States took on a life of its own nearly a year ago, before we knew who the nominees would be and what form the attacks would take. And now, with less than three weeks to election day, 43 percent of the people in this state believe in a man who refuses to discuss his drug habits prior to 1975 and 43 percent of the people in this state believe in a man who claims too much iced tea forced him from a room of aides discussing potential illegalities.

Yet 10 percent of you still don't know who to support. This one goes out to you.

o How big is it?

Through three debates, George W. Bush referred to his "big state" more than 50 times. On everything from how he'll clean up our land to how he administers the death of his citizens, young George consistently talked about how "ours is a big state" and how he'll use those experiences to mold his experience as president.

Doesn't it strike you as odd that a man so bent on his anti-government persona is running so heavily on his government record? And at the same time his government record spans only six years, two of which have been consumed by campaigning?

o A new Al

In Debate #3, we saw the return of Attack Al, and for a moment there, I thought we might see a new Al: Assaulting Al. As George junior spoke, but didn't answer the question at hand on a patient's bill of rights, Gore jumped up and approached Bush with a menacing glare.

For the first time in more than an hour of debate time, I got excited. I really thought Gore was going to hit him. Or at least get in his face, bump chests with him and yell, "You want a piece of my patient's bill? Huh? Huh?"

Now that would have been a debate.

o Tap dancing

Bush, citing the rules of the debate, failed to answer the first question directly germane to this campus: Does he support affirmative actin under the rules set forth by the Supreme Court. After a long-winded tap dance around the issue, during which he proclaimed love for "affirmative access" (whatever that means), Gore pushed him to say whether he supports the policy as used today, including, by the way, in University admissions policies.

To moderator Jim Lehrer's clarification question, Bush reaffirmed his support for "access," saying, "If affirmative action means quotas, I'm against it."

Wow, bold stance, Guv. Coming out against an illegal policy and then hiding behind rules to avoid saying that you really do oppose affirmative action as the Court defines it. That performance followed an impressive dance around his opposition to gay rights in Debate #2 and his refusal to respond to Gore challenge that his tax plan spends more on the wealthiest 1 percent than on education, the military and health care combined.

o What are you for?

Apparently Al Gore supports working families. Just in case you missed that, Gore is for working families. Gore = support for working families. He wants to work for you. If you're part of a working family, he's your guy.

o Basic instinct

In a well-planned and executed response, George Bush tried to quiet critics of his Debate #2 comments on the death penalty.

In that debate, Bush smirked and appeared to enjoy saying that, "we can't enhance the penalty any more than putting those three thugs to deaths" during an exchange about hate crimes legislation.

The joy with which he moved through that entirely unscripted answer showed more about the Texas governor than anything I've seen before or since. His well-written, but entirely pre-canned answer in the final debate doesn't change the instinct shown in the second.

So with Election Day 15 days away and the major television appearances completed, hopefully you're near a choice between Assaulting Al and Smirking George, and maybe I even helped a bit.

But even with my ranting and raving, rest assured that I know the vast majority of you don't care what I say. I'm just a lowly college journalist, and George already told you what to do with me in the final debate:

"Forget the journalists."

- Mike Spahn can be reached via e-mail at mspahn@umich.edu.