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GUEST
i j >n B 3 EB
GORE'S SURRENDER
Less than a hour after George Bush con
cluded his party's have-a-nice-election conven
tion with a vapid but beyond-the-expectations
acceptance speech, a source deep within the
Gore camp called me. This person had already
conferred with several Gore-ites, and each had
expressed the same sentiment: "Oh shit. What
do we do now?"
Bush and the Republicans had succeeded in
staging an R&B-scored, feel-good revue that
transfused Bush's own affability into his cam
paign and party, that defined the election as a
contest mostly of personality and charactei
(with Bush oddly cast as the morally upright
grown-up, sadly disappointed with Clinton and
Gore because of you-know-what), and that ren
dered the now smirk-free Bush into presiden
tial material presiding over a united party that
has reined in its more extreme elements.
The ease and cunning with which the Bush
campaign distanced itself—in sights and
sound—from the Party of Newt was frightening
for Democrats. No calls for culture wars. No
shrill attacks. No demands for dramatic down
sizing of the federal government. No bowing to
the religious right or the gun nuts. No mention
of the impeachment jihad. None of the harsh
stuff Democrats have desperately relied on in
recent years. After all, who needs policies
when you can satanize Gingrich and cry out,
"The .eligious light is coming"?
For their part, Bush and Dick Cheney did
champion a few policy ideas—priva
tizing Social Security, implementing
sweeping tax cuts, instituting
school vouchers—but tire thrust
of both of their speeches was
that Gore should be booted to
avenge the honor of the Oval
Office.
In other words, this election is
about a sCain.
Rather than challenge that propo
sition. Gore confirmed it when he selected
Senator Joe Lieberman, the "New Democrat"
from Connecticut, to be his running mate.
After watching the GOPers try to establish the
race as a competition of standards and char
acter, Gore elected not to fight back with
issues. Instead, he handcuffed himself to a
probity stand-in, a socially conservative
Orthodox Jew who prominently scolded Bill
Clinton for his pseudo-sex scandal. Gore's
response to the Republicans' collective tsk-tsk
over Clinton: Yes, this is about a stain, but I
have my own personal delouser.
But placing a ary cleaner on the ticket only
calls attention to the mess. It doesn't compen
sate—or change the topic. Moreover,
Lieberman's brand of cleaning fluid ruins as
much material as it destains. Lieberman, who
chairs the corporate-funded, right-leaning
Democratic Leadership Council, flirted with
partial privatization of Social Security and
experimenting with school vouchers—ideas
promoted by Bush and attacked by Gere as
risky schemes. With Lieberman by his side.
Gore can no longer slam Bush on these crucial
fronts. He's traded ammunition for cover.
During the Republican convention, Al From,
the DLC's grand pooh-bah, moaned, "We can
expect GOP presidential candidate George W.
Bush to continue aping our politics throughout
the rest of the campaign." Who's the monkey
now?
Nanoseconds after the Lieberman news hit
the cable shows, the Bush campaign gleefully
zapped out a nose-thumbing statement: "From
Social Security reform to missile defense, tort
reform to parental notification [regarding abor
tion], and from school choice to affirmative
action, Al Gore has chosen a man whose posi
tions are more similar to Governor Bush's than
to his own." An overstatement, but a very
useful one for the Republicans. Lieberman is
hardly a base-player. He shares Gore's corpo
rate-friendly trade position, which irritates
unionists. (He has suppoited labor on less con
tentious matters, such as workplace safery
standards and the minimum wage. His voting
record rates 80 percent on the AFL-CIO s score-
card.) Let Gore defend Lieberman's opposition
to affirmative action next time he visits a black
church. Lieberman, a hawk during the Gulf War
and the Kosovo bombinq, has urged the party
to be "pro-business" and led the charge for
capital gains tax cuts. He is not in tune with
Gore's recent populist thrusts against Big Oil,
Big Pharmaceuticals and Big Insurance. He
would protect HMOs from lawsuits seeking
punitive damages, and he opposed the Clinton
healthcare plan in favor of a more limited pro
posal put out by the insurance companies that
have generously underwritten his campaigns.
He is in favor of gun control, supportive of gay
rights (but not same-sex rnamage), usually a
reliable vote for environmentalists and pro-
choice (although as Connecticut Attorney
General back in the eighties, he did fight to cut
off Medicaid funding for abortion—and lost).
Lieberman has built his reputation by
advancing conservative positions on social
issues. Out-Tippeiing Tipper, he teamed
up with GOP culture cop WPUam
Bennett to assail Hollywood and
the music industry, targeting rap
music. (So much for the young
urban black vote.) He wrote the
law that required V-chips in
television sets. His DLC has
called for making it tougher to
obtain a divorce. (Lieberman is
once-divorced and has remarried.) He
chairs the Center for Jewish and Christian
Values, which aims to bring Jews and
Christians together "to build a more moral
society in America ’—but apparently "moral"
from a conservative perspective.
The 25-member board Lieberman oversees is
top-loaded with right-wingers, including Elliott
Abrams, Gary Bauer, William Bennett, Jack
Kemp. Jeane Kirkpatrick, William Kristol,
Michael Medved, Michael Novak and Ralph
Reed. (The outfit that sponsors the center, the
International Fellowship of Christians and
Jews, attributes out-of-wedlock births, juvenile
crime and "a breakdown in basic mora'ity" to
the absence of school prayer.) The sanctimo
nious Lieberman has perfected a neo-
Democratic recipe: offer suburbanites dollops
of liberalism on safe issues like the environ
ment and chunks of conservatism on the so-
called values issues of welfare, crime, educa
tion and culture, while providing plenty of
assistance to the party's corporate funders.
Perhaps Gore had planned a DLC-ish lurch
to the right all along. His populist us-against-
the-powerful bit—well, that was just a summer
fling. Or perhaps this all-too-cautious pol
decided it was time to get funky and do some
thing bold—break the Jew barrier. But Gore's
partnership with Lieberman smacks of an "oh
shit" overreaction to the Bush show in
Philadelphia. With Lieberman, he has
accepted—or surrendered to—the Bush teims
of battle.
David Corn
Reprinted from The Nation with permission.
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