Adios, Señor Gore: Back to Sloppin' the Hogs

Adiós, Señor Gore: Back to Sloppin' the Hogs

Since deadlines rule, and the election results will be known by the time most readers get to this column, I'll tread lightly on politics this week. Read the MUGGER analysis of George W. Bush's blowout victory at nypress.com this Friday at noon.

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The boys and I encountered one rough-and-tough cabbie the other day on the way to school?Halloween, in fact?and for a minute or two it appeared the ride would be a frosty one. I didn't need this. Just the day before I chewed out a jerk who took us from Hudson St. through Chinatown to get over to the FDR Dr., all so he could rack up several more $.30 dings on his meter. When it was clear what he was doing?at first, I just assumed he was going for the Park Ave. route, which is acceptable?I questioned the strategy and barked that he was a louse, treating us like we were off-the-plane immigrants from Taiwan. Sure enough, the tab was five dollars more than usual and so I semi-stiffed him on a tip, figuring you don't reward the bad deeds of a bandit.

I told them it was his car, so they grumpily stowed the bars in their backpacks and started nattering about the night of tricks or treats that awaited them after school. We had just cleared the Holland Tunnel when the cabbie opened up an egg and cheese sandwich and began wolfing it down. "Hey," MUGGER III piped up, "no eating allowed!" I told him to mind his own, that it was the fellow's workplace and he could do what he wanted, but the driver started laughing like crazy, and offered a deal. "Okay, little man," he said, "you busted me. Eat your bars, but I don't want any mess or crumbs in my cab!"

Late that afternoon, Junior and MUGGER III, outfitted in handsome Link (from the Legend of Zelda Nintendo 64 game) costumes?created by the sweet seamstress at Tribeca Cleaners on Reade St.?joined their buddies at Washington Market Park for a prelude to making the candy rounds of nearby apartment buildings and stores. I went without a costume this year?last October I was former President Bush?and Mrs. M just wore a goofy nose-and-glasses set, but it was a mob scene as the sun went down, and pretty cool to see most of the kids from the neighborhood in their scary garb.

Our boys were easy to spot, thankfully, since their costumes were forest green and each had a fake sword and shield to go with their brown boots. Now, most people aren't familiar with Link?except connoisseurs like George, Wendy and Scooter Tabb, who accompanied us for the two-hour stint of sugar-fueled madness?so a lot of people yelled at the boys, "Hey, Robin Hood, that's a neat costume!" Both Junior and MUGGER III took great offense at this, and it nagged at them throughout the evening. However, when we went to St. Marks Comics on Chambers St., the workers identified them right away; likewise at McDonald's, where a janitor got into a long discussion with Junior about the intricacies of Majora's Mask, the latest game starring the resourceful Link.

Last Friday, my guys were already talking about their getups for Halloween in 2001. Junior asked what I used to dress up as, and I told him that after the age of eight, it was always the same: a hobo. The costume was easy?just some ragged clothes, a ratty fedora, a beard and mustache rubbed on with a burnt cork and a pillow sack to collect candy. The holiday was so different in the suburbs. As soon as it was dark I joined up with two or three pals, similarly attired, and we'd roam the neighborhoods, unaccompanied by adults, and wouldn't make it back till 10 at night. Sure, you tossed any unwrapped candy or apples that might have razor blades wedged in them, but it was a pretty safe event. In the city, I can't imagine letting my kids go out on their own, even in a couple of years.

Also on Friday was the presidential and U.S. Senate balloting at their school. Junior told me he delivered his second-grade class for Bush, but that the older boys, those in ninth grade and above, voted heavily for Ralph Nader. The exit polls, according to my eight-year-old, pointed to a decisive victory for Rick Lazio. MUGGER III, at six, hasn't been fully indoctrinated yet, but did manage to cast his ballot for the next president, Mr. Bush.

I have no illusions that Junior's fascination with Bush is at all significant. He's influenced by his dad, like most kids, and will sooner, rather than later, be making his own decisions, which I'm sure will horrify me. Still, throughout this past year, while he watches in amazement as I sit down before the political talk shows?when I could be watching The Simpsons!?he's asked a lot of questions about past presidents and now has a rudimentary knowledge of how the U.S. government works. He knows that Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Dick Nixon were bad guys; Ronald Reagan, Ike and Calvin Coolidge the stalwarts of capitalism. (Including FDR in that list would curdle the cream in my parents' coffee: man, how they hated him. My father's beef was Roosevelt's attempt to stack the Supreme Court; my mother was convinced he lied all along about getting the U.S. involved in WWII.)

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On a related subject, it really sticks in my craw that Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and ubiquitous panelist on talk shows (though these days, what pundit isn't ubiquitous?), has kept up his anti-Bush patter to the final days of the campaign. In the Washington Post on Sunday, he predicted Gore would defeat Bush by a single percentage point, while winning the Electoral College by a 317-221 margin. That he also said that Lazio would knock off Hillary, as well as that the GOP would retain both the House and Senate, says, in capital letters: SOUR GRAPES.

Kristol, who drank the John McCain nectar to excess?at least he's a Republican, unlike so many besotted liberals in the press who swooned over the Arizona Senator?still hasn't recovered from Bush's winning the GOP nomination. Whether it's because he coveted McCain's chief of staff appointment, or simply because of the bad blood between him and the Bush family, I have no idea. But when you predict a victory for Lazio, who's down in the pre-election polls, as well as a Bob Franks upset of Jon Corzine, and then claim Bush will lose, even though he's ahead of Gore by an average of about 5 points in the polls (even in Monday's New York Times!), it's fairly ludicrous. And weird.

On the evening that the news of Bush's DUI arrest in 1976 was revealed, Kristol was on Nightline and inexplicably said: "I don't know that we've ever had a story like this break this late in a campaign. And I think it probably determines the fate of Governor Bush's campaign." This is nonsense. Certainly Kristol, who was Vice President Dan Quayle's chief of staff, remembers the indictment of Caspar Weinberger the weekend before the '92 election.

I have enormous respect for Kristol's intellect?and he justifiably can be credited with sinking Hillary Clinton's socialist healthcare plan in '94, by waking up dozy Republicans?but he's let his animosity toward Bush get the better of him. It's clear now he wants Bush to lose: probably because the most disconnected place on Earth the day the Governor becomes president-elect will be Bill Kristol's office.

Hardball's Chris Matthews, who can't stand Bill Clinton but is still a Democrat, couldn't muster the guts to go all-out for Bush. He claimed, with his heart rather than head, that the Texas Governor will win the popular vote by a single percentage point, but that Gore will take the presidency by coming out on top in the Electoral College. Sure, Chris. That goes for another Democratic daydream believer, the Chicago Tribune's Clarence Page, who's fooling himself that this will be the first election since 1888 that has a split verdict.

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I have a lot of respect for Bob Guccione Jr., both for his business acumen and iconoclastic editorial vision. He also has balls: taking on Rolling Stone in the mid-80s with his Spin, and succeeding at making Jann Wenner's once-seminal journal an anachronism, was an accomplishment no one can ever take away from Guccione.

He's not much of a writer, as his occasional blurbs in his current Gear readily demonstrate. And I know he was reared in England, but you'd think Guccione, of all people, would refrain from constantly using the British phrase "at the end of the day," which has been so annoyingly coopted by American journalists. The gutsy publisher was not at his best in November's Gear, in which he wrote an embarrassingly naive endorsement of Al Gore, thus joining his once-competitor Wenner in rolling over for a man who has not-so-obliquely threatened to dismantle the First Amendment.

Guccione's hyperbolic first paragraph sets the stage for his Gore pick: "Today the world didn't end. It's September 13, the date Yasser Arafat set to unilaterally declare a free Palestinian State which, had he done so, in the absence of a negotiated Mideast peace, probably would have ignited a tinderbox that would certainly have escalated into a horrific and bloody conflict, and possibly war. A war that could mushroom into the Third World War. Both previous world wars started from similar tiny sparks."

Such a statement, which is utterly unconvincing given the long history of Mideast turmoil, is nutty. And so, when Guccione gives the nod to Gore, citing his experience (in bending over for Clinton, Bob?) and brainpower, you have to wonder where the magazine dude has been these past eight years. He then writes: "At the end of the day, it's just not a good idea to elect an idiot as President. And Bush is an idiot. This is not bias, this is certifiable."

I don't know where Guccione obtains such certifications, but I imagine from the same ageless wizard who passed similar judgment on Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Jerry Ford and Reagan. Not to mention Franklin Roosevelt, who was famously described by Oliver Wendell Holmes as possessing a "second-rate intellect." No, I don't believe Bush would best Clinton, Gore, Martin Peretz, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. or Mario Cuomo in a spelling bee, a game of Trivial Pursuit or the number of Charles Dickens novels read. Not many Americans, including Guccione, Wenner or any Kennedy, could. Heck, Bush probably didn't even crack open Earth in the Balance.

So what?

If Guccione really believes that a man who's been twice elected governor of the country's second largest state and is about to win the presidency doesn't possess an intelligence that isn't measured by the SAT, then I'd suggest he's the one who's a certified idiot.

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Bush's long-ago DUI arrest was a media story that didn't resonate much with voters. I agree that the Governor was spreading the peanut butter a little thick when he said he didn't publicize the infraction in deference to his daughters, but what exactly does the press want from a candidate's past? Would it satisfy the smug Beltway elite if Bush, upon entering the presidential race, laid out his entire life story, as if he were in a confessional? "Yes, Dan, when I was 15, I stole three copies of Playboy from a local Piggly Wiggly." "Mr. Jennings, in high school, I peeked at Susie Wood's math exam, and therefore received an 87 instead of an 84." "Bernie, I'm not proud of this, but when I was 13, my dad caught me masturbating in my bedroom. It was an humiliating embarrassment I'll never forget."

No one can condone drinking and driving. In fact, it wouldn't be a bad idea if kids weren't allowed to obtain driver's licenses until they were 21. A lot more lives would be saved by that, right now, than by making sure Joe Camel's image doesn't appear in public.

What no one has focused on is that in 1976, the United States was a different country. Imagine: you could smoke on airplanes and buses; in offices; in the White House; and even in supermarkets and some movie theaters. When you visited a friend's house, more often than not an ashtray was set out in the living room. As for drinking and driving, it wasn't abnormal behavior. I did it all the time as a high school and college student, as did my friends. We drove after smoking joints, dropping acid, snorting crystal meth. So did the same reporters (at least when it comes to the booze) who are now so self-righteously castigating Gov. Bush.

This doesn't excuse such reckless behavior. I'm glad that today's drunk-driving laws are severe. But you can't apply this era's mores and cultural habits to the 1970s. Had Bush, who stopped drinking 14 years ago, been arrested for a DUI five years ago and was ratted out by those Maine Democrats, his campaign would've been over. And justifiably so. Just as Al Gore's would have been had he been caught lying about obtaining illegal campaign contributions from a Buddhist temple fundraiser. Oops, that really happened. The memory's really shot when you hit 45.

Finally, when George W. Bush delivers his acceptance speech in Austin on Election Night, I hope he finds the time to mention a few fellow Republicans with whom, for strategic reasons, he couldn't identify himself during the campaign. For starters, a rousing cheer for the House Managers who led the fight for Clinton's impeachment: these are men of true courage. And, however impolitic, given his moral hypocrisy, Newt Gingrich ought to be recognized as well. If it weren't for Gingrich's brilliant leadership in taking over the House in '94, forcing Clinton to ignore his wife's paleoliberal blueprint, the current economic prosperity wouldn't have lasted so long.

In fact, once Clinton gets his legal troubles cleared up, he'd be smart to team up with Gingrich and go on the road for a series of debate/lectures. They'd both make a bundle and become friends for life.

NOVEMBER 6

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