The candidates, à la Beckett.

L>ast week in Slate, Jodie T. Allen and Bill Barnes proposed using advanced Microsoft software to condense the transcripts of the presidential debates. Compression is the right approach, but more of a human touch is needed. Rather than reduce political dialogue to straightforward facts and proposals, perhaps we should try to bring out the singular aesthetic vision that wells up in even our most robotically pre-programmed politicians. Too many facts, too much information: We need to make politics more beautiful, melancholy, strange. The vast audience that attends the plays of Samuel Beckett or reads the poetry of John Ashbery is sadly neglected in our political process. Here is a compressed transcript of the debates. All the words were actually spoken. They are presented completely out of context, but in perfect accord with what the transcriber believes to be the inward poetic essence of each candidate.

[Note: Bob Dole's remarks required less editing than the others'.]

Act I

Hartford, Conn.

Clinton (from a high rocky outcrop): I want. I will try. I ran. I wanted, you took me. Let's keep it going. We cut, let's balance. We cut, let's pass. We passed, let's expand. We passed, let's keep going. We passed, let's make. We can build. I look forward. We're going. I believe, I have worked. I supported, I felt. I've worked, I supported. I supported, I differed, I believe.

Dole (standing in a trash can): Thirty-five to 50 new bureaucracies. I carry a little card around in my pocket. He noted a few, but there are others.

Clinton (descending): I do think. I do believe.

Dole: That's not true in Connecticut.

Clinton: Best shape, biggest drop, all groups of people.

Dole (gesturing darkly): Scaring seniors and tearing me apart. He twisted arms. I don't--you know.