l to Tipper: ''It's the economy, darling.''
Forget about the kiss in Los Angeles. After Labor Day, the boom remains Al Gore's strongest suit for victory in November.
Lovers, not voters, seek soul mates. The American electorate doesn't have to fall madly in love with the next president. Voters just need to like and respect Bill Clinton's successor enough to trust him with their prosperity.
If the market stays steady and inflation and interest rates stay down, switching horses becomes harder and harder to rationalize. This is particularly true when the other horse - George W. Bush - is running scared and a little ugly much sooner than his earlier cockiness would predict.
Already, Mr. Congeniality seems a little less so as he signs on to a campaign of attack ads against his Democratic opponent. Naturally, the Democrats will fire back with their own negative ads. That just stands to make likeability a draw, leaving Gore - at least on paper - with the upper hand when it comes to the politics of prosperity.
In what seems like a century ago but was only last month, Bush tried to turn the economy into an issue that helps his cause.
At the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, he accused the Clinton administration of squandering the ''promise of prosperity'' and pledged to confront ''the hard issues,'' such as national security, health, education, and retirement. But except for education, where Gore is shaky in his absolute rejection of any kind of school voucher system, Bush is making little headway in demonstrating his way is the better way. He, in fact, has been on the defense in each area.
Perhaps the issues wouldn't matter so much if the vaunted Bush charm had remained the focus of summertime headlines. But Gore was lucky and, for once, Bush was not.
Fortunately for Gore, no one paid much attention to the substance of the Democratic National Convention, particularly to his rushed delivery of a flat acceptance speech, with its single memorable and hardly inspirational line: ''I stand before you as my own man.''
Unfortunately for Bush, the trivial was the big news out of Los Angeles, from Hollywood and its stars to the Gores and their kiss. Only in America - and only for a candidate as dependably robotic as Gore - would a three-seconds-long smooch between husband and wife give a presidential campaign new lift and major redefinition.
Even so, in marriage and in politics, passion goes only so far. The kiss provided some nice imagery for Gore, but it is not strong enough to carry him to victory.
Between now and November there are pitfalls aplenty for both candidates.
Bush still has to prove that he is smart enough to be president, and he can't do that if he looks as if he is afraid to debate his opponent face-to-face.
Complaining that a debate planned for the University of Massachusetts at Boston is too partisan because the school is adjacent to the Kennedy Library is a bit puzzling for a presidential nominee who used a film clip of John F. Kennedy in his Philadelphia infomercial. Of course, Bush must survive whatever debates he engages in without major gaffe or guffaw.
Gore must keep himself separated from Bill Clinton's personal weaknesses in the voters' minds and hope that his own fund-raising activities and curious miscellaneous declarations about things like inventing the Internet don't undercut his overall credibility, as the Bush camp desires. Demonstrating that he is a big policy wonk with some soul would be helpful, too, especially during debates. But here is one vote for less kissing at the podium and more fact-backed dissing.
As reported in last Friday's Wall Street Journal, ''The Nasdaq composite index soared 102.54 points, or 2.5 percent to 4206.35, while the Dow Jones industrials jumped 112.09 points to 11215.10, capping a month of strong gains for both indexes.... Factory orders dropped a record 7.5 percent in July, but a buildup of inventories suggests continued strength in the manufacturting sector. Overall, factory orders are up 9.5 percent so far this year.''
Tipper to Al: ''I love it when you talk numbers to me, sweetheart.''
Joan Vennochi is a Globe columnist.
