Tucker:
If I lean back in my chair ever so slightly and look out my window, I can see the dome of the Texas Capitol and, just to the southwest, the top of the governor’s mansion. It’s 6 a.m. Gee, do you think the light in W.’s study is on? Part of me really wants to believe that he and Condi and Turd and the ghost of Bully are already up cramming for Thursday’s debate, but why should he bother? Much as I fantasized about the temper-tantrum possibilities of a McCain-Bradley race only a few weeks ago, it’s getting to be something approaching inevitable that we’re in for a year of Gush-Bore.
There’s a Time/CNN poll out today that shows Gore a few points ahead of Bradley. I worried that Bradley had peaked too early, and maybe I was I right. If he doesn’t win in New Hampshire, I don’t care what the laptop liberals say: The race is over. The apparatus of the vice-presidency is too much to overcome, even this particular vice-presidency. The main argument against Gore–the bathtub ring of scandal–is more effectively made in the general election than the primary. Who wants to rebel against the Clinton years? By and large, Republicans and independents, not Democrats. The same poll shows McCain actually leading Bush for the first time, which didn’t get the wide play I thought it would. My suspicion is that the folks in Washington and New York, much like those of us in Austin, don’t really believe it. Who are the 37 percent of New Hampshire voters saying they’ll go for McCain? Is Michael Lewis part of the sample? The C.W. is that McCain hurts Bradley’s chances, because independents can go this way or that and Bradley needs them all, but I think the reverse is true: Bradley is a drain on the potential pool of voters for McCain, who needs every single one to orchestrate an upset. I’d be shocked if he didn’t fall short. By the way, how ‘bout Adm. Stockdale defending McCain’s sanity in Friday’s New York Times? Next up: Latrell Sprewell on W.’s potty mouth.
Speaking of the Times, did you see Johnny Apple Polisher’s piece over the weekend marveling at Bush’s facile frat-boy geniality? What surprised me the most wasn’t that I’d read this before in, oh, I don’t know, Texas Monthly and Talk. It’s that the Times has been so hostile to Bush up to this point. I can’t explain the shift in thinking other than to speculate that the media establishment is finally giving up and accepting his inevitability the way the political establishment long ago did. (By the way, did you hear that your George W.–Will–has made up with mine? Another sign.) But I have a theory about what came before: More than just Bush, the Times hates Texas. On the whole, the national press has a sneering stereotypical view of the state, which you’d think was overrun with oil-slicked bumpkins, tyrannical high-school football coaches, mechanical-bull-riding smoothies, and the odd computer geek, but no one sneers with more relish than the Times. Maybe it dates back to the trouble Molly Ivins had as the paper’s Denver bureau chief. Legend has it that she walked around the office barefoot, brought her dog, Shit, to work, and offended Abe Rosenthal’s sensibilities (who doesn’t these days?) by referring to the goings-on at a chicken-processing plant as a “gang pluck.” Whatever the reason, you don’t see that great patriot Bob Herbert holing up at the Four Seasons in Birmingham to write column after column about the barbarism of Alabama justice. He’s our burden. My burden. Ugh.
I’m out of space–and I haven’t even said a word about Trump, whose candidacy is deader than Hsing-Hsing. This guy manages to make Perot look good.
Regards,
Evan
