September 10, 2000

Things To Watch, And Watch Out For, In The Election

An old saying invented for this year’s presidential campaign is that the candidate leading in the public opinion polls on Labor Day will go on to win the election.  Hog wash.

Past evidence is inconclusive – like most polls.

Democrats and liberal media types were ecstatic last week over a Newsweek poll of registered voters conducted Aug. 30-31. It indicated Al Gore had overcome George W. Bush’s overall lead and surged an astonishing 20 points to lead 49 to 39 percent. One must keep in mind that Newsweek is a subsidiary of the Washington Post.

State polls also taken during the last five days of August -- when Gore was enjoying a whopping "post-convention bounce" -- show a more realistic picture.

When these polls are related to state electoral votes, which determine the winner, Bush leads with 257 electorals. Gore has 170 electorals including California and New York. The victory number is 270.

The key figure to watch is the electoral count of states – not the total popular vote.

There are other, more important things to watch out for.  They are X-factors, October surprises and gaffes.  

Few political campaigns are decided by "issues."  There are two or three sides of an issue. No matter which side a candidate espouses, he/she will offend supporters of the other side. Winning candidates are "mugwumps" – those most successful in straddling an issue fence with their mug on one side and their wump on the other. Consequently trivial things often are the downfall of candidates.

In political lingo, X-factors are unexpected events that will swing public opinion

for or against a candidate. Examples are war, economy, assassinations and natural disasters.

October surprises are embarrassments revealed a week or two before the election. This denies the target adequate time to overcome the damage. Among potent situations are scandals, misuse of funds, abuse of power, sex, health, military service and past venal sins involving alcohol and drugs.

The most maddening things to watch out for are gaffes. These are trivial mistakes of language syntax, mannerism, slips of the tongue, embarrassing accidents, mispronouncements, and inappropriate jokes.

Gore is chided for being "wooden," taking undue credit ("I created the internet"), dodging facts ("There is no controlling, legal authority") and ducking responsibility ("I didn’t know my visit to that Buddhist Temple was a fund-raiser).

Bush is constantly reminded that he didn’t know the name of an obscure Asian prime minister, once was an alcoholic, had low grades in college, misspoke trillion for billion, and. served in the National Guard during the Vietnam War.  

We can expect more petty, half-true, silly gaffes in the coming weeks. "Negative attacks" produce results for candidates and spicy copy for political reporters ("Let’s you and him fight, I’ll hold your coats").

Gaffe of the week is Bush’s open-mike remark to his running mate, Dick Chenney, that a certain New York Times political reporter in the audience was a "major league (obscenity)." The audience didn’t hear the locker-room assessment. However, the television mikes recorded it and magnified it for the titillation of evening news viewers.

The public has not yet decided whether this is a demerit for Bush, or a gold star for correctly defining biased journalists. George W. refused to apologize. On balance, he probably gained votes.

The most famous gaffe of recent years was delivered by Vice-President Dan Quayle. In conducting a spelling bee with flash cards, he corrected a six-year-old boy over the word "potato" – shown as "potatoe" on the card provided by the teacher.  The boy was quoted later as declaring Quayle "is an idiot."

When President Gerald Ford, a large man, bumped his head on the door of Air Force One, he was dubbed "clumsy" incessantly by the liberal press. The gag line was, "He played too much football in college without his helmet on."

Conventional wisdom is that Richard Nixon lost the debate with John F. Kennedy by failing to shave just before the event. "His five-o’clock-shadow made him look "menacing."

Sen. Bob Dole appeared to be old and tottery by falling off a makeshift platform. President George Bush is said to have lost his debate with Bill Clinton by glancing at his watch as if he was bored. Edmund Muskie’s presidential bid collapsed when he dragged a hay-wagon to the front door of the Manchester Guardian -- in a snowstorm – to tearfully denounce the newspaper, which had said some unflattering things about his wife.

President Jimmy Carter hit the skids when he confessed to a Playboy writer that he had "looked on a lot of women with lust" and had "committed adultery in my heart many times."  The modern conception seems to be that real adultery is OK, but dreaming about it is unnatural.

A humdinger gaffe has yet to surface in this year’s election. But with a zealous press on the lookout, we can be certain that treats will come to save us from issues.

By Lindsey Williams, columnist for Sun Coast Media Group newspapers