n a curious confluence of events that will keep graduate students busy for years of postelection analysis, the Gore campaign proved toothless in chewing on the record and qualifications of George W. Bush.
Al Gore's pedantic earnestness, his off-putting manner, and the American tendency to sympathize with the guy who's seen as not too bright, combined to neutralize the Democrats' attacks on Bush's wafer-thin pedigree. The news media happily embraced the GOP propaganda machine's story line of Al-as-embellisher. Ignorance is not as great a sin as bragging, in Year 2000.
The Gore high command conceived a strategy that focused on the trees - Social Security and Medicare - instead of the forest, the whole vast terrain of a low-turnout general election where special interest money from Big Oil, Big Tobacco, Big Pharmaceuticals, and the gun lobby would chip away at the lead Gore had amassed a month ago.
Neither Gore nor his running mate developed a coherent strategy of painting Bush as a threat to the US economy or dominance in foreign affairs. By allowing Bush to follow his own agenda, the Democrats made a conscious choice not to go negative. That has cost them dearly.
The three debates wound up elevating Bush's stature. Though millions of Americans found him vacuous, ill-informed, nervous, and at times clearly lost in his own screwy syntax, Bush emerged from the debates with a slight polling lead, which is all his handlers could have hoped for. Gore won the first, lost the second by appearing sedated, then took the third as Bush wilted. But the public saw it differently, judging Bush sufficiently bright to be president.
Going negative is a risky strategy with swing voters. But negative works. In Gore's case, where he needs to win seven or eight of the 10 or so tossup states to pull this thing out, he does not have the personal standing with voters, a sufficient reservoir of trust and confidence and voter commitment to his cause, to do the deed himself. And Joe Lieberman has proved similarly fangless. So to whom can he turn for the heavy lifting?
Bring on Battlin' Bill. The Big Guy. Make the call down to the bullpen. Tell the big lefty to loosen up and get out there. Where would I use Clinton? In every big city in every swing state. Not just with black voters. But across the board. And on what issues? I'd do it on foreign policy. I'd do it on partisanship in Washington. And on brain cells. If I'm Bill, I'd go for the throat. I'd book Big Bill into every swing state big city with a baseball team, and I'd play hardball.
This Clinton-as-campaigner would say: Governor Bush claims he'll bring back every American soldier from Bosnia and Kosovo and from everywhere else in the Balkans. What would that do? Just destroy NATO! That's what it'd do.
Clinton has the credibility to say: That will destroy the alliance that is the world's only hope for peace in Eastern Europe. The United States furnishes less than 20 percent of the peacekeepers in the Balkans. But if Governor Bush has his way, they'd all be brought home, never mind what the other NATO countries think. And the Atlantic Alliance that defeated Milosevic and restored democracy to Serbia - without a single US combat casualty - would come apart in a few weeks.
Clinton-as-campaigner could tell the undecided: Governor Bush will order up a new missile defense shield, a Star Wars system, that he'd give away to America's allies to ward off any potential missile attack. That sounds great. But the experts say it won't work. And the leaders of every major country in Europe - every one of our allies - as well as the leaders of Russia and China and every other major country in the world - regard this promise as a major destabilizing force in the future. That one decision would turn America overnight into an outlaw nation. Instead of being the strongest voice for democracy, we'd be the bullies that destroyed arms control.
With his tenuous grasp of geopolitical realities and a cheerful indifference to the subtleties of diplomacy and arms control, Governor Bush would blunder like an untrained adolescent trying to learn to drive on the busiest of freeways. Clinton can make the case, in a way Gore cannot. Anyone still angry at Clinton over Monica is already voting for Bush. So what's to lose by loosing Big Bill?
David Nyhan's e-mail address is nyhan@globe.com.
