o much for the Civility Boyz.
The pair that vowed piously to bring civility back into national politics took a Labor Day header into a dry swimming pool. When the governor of Texas uttered a vulgar insult to his running mate Monday from an Illinois stage, his words were broadcast to the crowd and the network microphones.
''There's Adam Clymer, major-league asshole from The New York Times,'' Bush said as he crinkled his crinkly grin and waved at the rubes. Responding with the sort of bootlicking acquiescence that those who knew Dick Cheney's solid record had hoped he would never stoop to, the vice presidential nominee on the honor-and-integrity ticket burped back, ''Oh yeah, he is, big time.''
With Bush's juvenile jibe and Cheney's tail-wagging rejoinder, the two Republicans undid all their careful propagandizing of the last two months. This is what rookies do. They get tight around the collar when the pressure mounts. From his 17-point polling lead a month ago, when it seemed he could do no wrong, Bush has watched his lead disappear. Now his campaign traces the classic parabola of the front-runner who's fallen behind. First there is the abandonment of the high-road campaign style and the introduction of the first really negative TV ad barrage. Then there is the silly refusal to consent to the prearranged debates, three of them worked out months ago by the two major political parties. Next came the gaffe in Naperville, Ill.
Bush, his apologists scrambled to explain, was upset because Clymer's articles about his actual record in Texas were unflattering. The Lone Star State has dirty air, lax regulators, and does a lousy job of giving poor kids health care. It's all sad but true. Cheney, meanwhile, has been forced to renounce millions of dollars in stock options because the Times delved into his $40 million golden handshake from an oil supply company.
So both men have felt the lash of the mighty Times. That's nothing new. Everyone who runs for president has some journalists they despise. But Clymer, who is a friend of mine, is not a fang-and-claw dirt-disher; he is an evenhanded reporter of just the facts, ma'am.
Isuggest that the Guv buy a copy of Clymer's recent biography of Ted Kennedy, the finest explication of the workings of the US Senate to appear in many a moon. Because, Governor, I don't quite know how to put this, but you don't know squat about how the government really works.
You could learn something from Clymer. He's been around Washington a lot longer than you, when your office in your daddy's 1988 election campaign was across the hall from Dirty Trickster Lee Atwater's. All you know about national politics you soaked up at the knee of Low Blow Lee. Willie Horton? The spurious claims that Mike Dukakis was not a loyal and patriotic American? The racist ads in the South and West that put your old man up? The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
It is not unusual for political clans like Bush, Bush, & Bush to leverage their assets (former president, present governors of Texas and Florida, and maybe the next president) by practicing us-versus-them politics. If you weren't with George the Father, you're not fully trusted by George the Son. The phenomenally successful financial grab that obliterated all of Bush Jr.'s primary opponents amassed the astonishing total of $100 million for an untested national candidate. Get on board or else, boys.
In large part, that money came from corporate executives and lobbyists already familiar with the access portals to Bush & Bush Inc. If you didn't give early, it didn't count nearly as much when it comes time to dole out the tax breaks, the regulatory relief, the ambassadorships, the pork, the gravy, and the apple pie a la mode.
When John McCain was whipping Bush to a fare-thee-well, the Arizona senator was clobbered by Bush negative ads, beginning in the South Carolina ambush that leaves McCain's partisans still smoldering at Bush's cheap tactics. Then there was the $2.5 million in spurious negative ads that a Bush oilman ally dropped on McCain in New York and elsewhere.
When push comes to shove, Bush Jr. gets down and dirty. Just like his daddy. Just like Lee Atwater. Willie Horton, your memory lives on. We're in the stretch run now. Junior looks like he's getting tight around the collar. His tax cut giveaway isn't working the way it worked for Old Read-My-Lips. Those bottom-line lobbyist-contributors see their $100 million going down the drain. Junior looks like he's afraid of big-time TV debates and wants to cower in the lee of nice-guy talk show hosts instead.
And now he's told reporters just what he thinks of one of their best. It is a performance we cannotlabel major league. I guess you'd have to call it Bush league.
David Nyhan is a Globe columnist.
