ACOUPLE OF years after the 2000 election, I asked one of Al Gore's top advisors why, if his client was such a passionate environmentalist, he had spent so little time during the campaign discussing the environment.
Because we told him not to, explained the consultant. It wouldn't have helped him win.
"I said to him, 'Look, you can do that, but you're not going to win a single electoral vote more than you now have,' " said Tad Devine, a partner in the consulting firm of Shrum, Devine and Donilon. "If you want to win Michigan and western Pennsylvania, here are the issues that really matter."
In the end, Gore won those two states but lost the race -- and he lost it on intangibles, on qualities that were difficult to quantify. He lost because he seemed phony, still and awkward. And why wouldn't he? Virtually every word he uttered before election day had been market-tested in advance.
I asked Devine if he'd considered the possibility that Gore might have been a warmer, more credible and inspiring candidate if he'd been permitted to talk about the things he'd really wanted to talk about.
"That's an interesting thought," Devine said.
I've covered all or part of eight presidential campaigns as a political reporter, and with each one, I have grown increasingly fed up with the insulting welter of sterilized speechifying, insipid photo ops and idiotic advertising that passes for public discourse these days. I believe that American politics has become overly cautious, cynical, mechanistic and bland, and I fear that the inanity and ugliness of postmodern public life has caused many Americans to lose the habits of citizenship.
Of course, I'm aware that the good old days weren't so terrific either. After a founding generation populated by geniuses, the majority of American presidents have been overmatched mediocrities. Eloquence and honor have rarely been the coin of the realm. Bloviation and expediency were more like it. And although there has been nonstop bleating in recent years about how politics has gotten so much worse because of the vast sums of money and the smarmy influence of lobbyists, the truth is there have always been toads and rodents like Jack Abramoff eager to spread money among morally retarded elected officials.
