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Tucker Carlson and Evan Smith

the breakfast table
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from: Evan Smith

George W.: Teflon Candidate

Posted Tuesday, Nov. 30, 1999, at 6:52 PM ET

Tucker:

If you figure out who buys which magazines for what reason, I will pay you cash money to tell me. This is a question I mull over and over because it's part of my job to answer it--to try and figure out how to please the 35,000 or so kind souls who (hopefully) buy Texas Monthly on the newsstands each month without mortally offending the 275,000 or so who subscribe. It's no easy task. One year, Lady Bird Johnson sells, the next she doesn't; or rather, one way we spin a story about her (icon in repose) works, but another way (long-suffering wife of a serial philanderer) doesn't. Authentic Texan Matthew McConaughey on the cusp of his hunkdom dies an agonizing newsstand death, but recent Texas transplant Sandra Bullock is huge. Troy Aikman in Armani scores, but Nolan Ryan in a cowboy hat whiffs. Not even George W. Bush, the Ricky Martin of presidential politics, is a guaranteed winner. When he was running against Ann Richards in 1994, he sold OK (a nice cover line, though: "Son of a Bush"). When he was first exploring the possibility of a White House bid in the summer of '98, he did worse, actually, than the first time. But this past June, when we did our comprehensive, seven-segment story on the guy, it was one of the year's best sellers. Most of those extra copies were probably sold to Howard Fineman, Dan Balz, and their national press corps brethren, but we'll take it. Their money's green.

Bush is apparently a hot ticket on TV, too. The ratings for Meet the Press were 91 percent higher than Sam and Cokie's on the day Tim Russert flew to Austin and interviewed the guv at the mansion. A cynical part of me wants to believe that one of every two viewers tuned in hoping to see a gaffe, but not even the now-famous pop quiz--the You're No Jack Kennedy of the 2000 campaign--has slowed the juggernaut. (I'm duty-bound to point out, by the way, that Bush's answers--General and Lee--may inadvertently tell us something about him: He's a Dukes of Hazzard fan.) Everyone covering the race is looking for a comparison point for Bush, and I've decided it's Reagan: amiable, genial, an advocate of broad principles instead of specific policies, and blessed with good fortune and an utter coating of Teflon. For instance: Thanks to Jay H. Hatfield, no one talks about his druggie past anymore. The story was always going to be hard to prove, but the burden got damn near impossible when Fortunate Son's thoroughly implausible afterword withered under the slightest cross-examination. Now anyone who hopes to persuade voters and the media that W. stands for Wasted is going to have to invent a time machine, take us back to the Chateau Bijon in Houston, and put us in the physical presence of the Bombastic Bushkin with a spoon up his nose. Rotsa Ruck.

I don't know about you, but I've always thought the potential peril for Bush wasn't "younger, wilder" but "older, milder"--that is, he's not nearly as conservative as the GOP would like to believe. Everything to this point had confirmed that sense: his softish stance on abortion, his attacks on the congressional right, his compassion rap. And then he goes to refuses to meet with the Log Cabin Republicans. I thought Anthony Lewis had him dead to rights in today's Times. Why shouldn't he meet with them? What's the harm? Maybe, as Steve Forbes says, he'd do it if they called it a fund-raiser. The Bush we know in Texas--the Bush I know--has too much class to snub anybody, ideology aside. A longtime confrere of his from Dallas, a gay man, called me yesterday in despair, dumbstruck by the decision. If Bush's good friend Bob Bullock--who as state comptroller and lieutenant governor brought blacks and browns and women and gays into the white-male Texas government--were alive, he'd give him hell. The rest of us should too.

Regards,
Evan

the breakfast table
entries
1234567891011121314151617
from: Evan Smith

George W.: Teflon Candidate

Posted Tuesday, Nov. 30, 1999, at 6:52 PM ET
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Evan Smith is deputy editor of Texas Monthly. Tucker Carlson writes for the Weekly Standard and Talk.
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