Who Says Bush Isn't Brilliant?

"In the end, a Bush victory was (A) UNTHINKABLE/(B) PREDICTABLE. The revelation over the final weekend that Bush had been arrested for drunk driving in 1976 proved (A) DECISIVE/(B) INCONSEQUENTIAL. Voter impatience with the snottiness Gore showed in the debates was always (A) OVERSTATED/(B) A TICKING TIME BOMB. But in the end, it was turnout that was decisive, as (A) UNION MEMBERS/(B) SOUTHERN GUN-OWNERS flocked to the polls in unprecedented numbers. Voters ultimately couldn't (A) SUPPRESS THEIR GRATITUDE FOR/(B) GIVE TWO SHITS ABOUT the Clinton-led economic boom, and once the results from Florida were announced at 7 p.m. on election night, it was clear that Gore (A) WOULD WIN IN A CAKEWALK/(B) NEVER HAD A CHANCE.

"The larger lesson is that the election of Bill Clinton in 1992 (A) USHERED IN A NEW ERA OF/(B) DIDN'T NECESSARILY IMPLY Democratic Party dominance. Bush simply (A) WAS THE LATEST IN A SORRY LINE OF REPUBLICAN LOSERS/(B) BLEW A COMPLACENT DEMOCRATIC PARTY OUT OF THE WATER. It's now clear that the Republican Party has (A) SLIPPED INTO IRRELEVANCE/(B) REJUVENATED ITSELF AS A MORE INCLUSIVE ORGANIZATION, and the GOP last night was (A) LONGING NOSTALGICALLY FOR/(B) THANKING ITS LUCKY STARS IT HAD STEPPED OUT OF the Gingrich era. This was a conclusion (A) THAT I HAD REACHED BACK IN MARCH/(B) ON WHICH I STOOD NEARLY ALONE, TACKING BOLDLY AGAINST THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM AS THE SITUATION CHANGED IN THE ELECTION'S FINAL DAYS."

Bush Is Brilliant Even if you don't think (as I do) that the revelation of Dubya's driving under the influence is merely a cynical ploy to pick up us wavering Irish-American voters, there's no denying that one of the great myths about the campaign has been exploded. Win or lose, the guy does have smarts of a certain sort. Let's grant that if he were to sit down next to you or me and try to fill out, with a number-two pencil, some quantitative-reasoning exam of the SAT sort, he'd do about as well as your golden retriever. As a friend of mine who went to an Ivy League university (the same one I attended) once said, "The nice thing about going to a place like Harvard or Yale is that all rich people think you're smart and all smart people think you're rich." In the case of Dubya (who went to both Harvard and Yale), the rich people are wrong and the smart people (as usual) are right. And yet my pal E.J. Dionne, who appears to be in a partisan panic lest Gore lose?and largely on the grounds of Bush's alleged stupidity?recently described as "brilliant" Bush's strategy of attacking Washington partisanship. E.J.'s got a point. This is one area in which Bush's instincts mirror those of the president he seeks to replace. One of the great revelations in POTUS Speaks, the memoir of Clinton's chief speechwriter Michael Waldman, is that Clinton, among the most partisan politicians of modern times, was confused as to why Americans hated partisanship so much. (He was right to be; partisanship is the great bulwark of a democratic society.)

But although he didn't particularly understand this loathing of partisanship, Clinton was more than willing to use it. He used to joke that the worst thing you could say about Stalin was that he was excessively partisan. "People think that partisanship is the root of all evil," a bewildered Clinton said. Waldman adds, "From now on, Clinton instructed us, all issues should be framed in this way. 'This is the best slogan we've ever had.'"

This anti-partisanship crusade?which Dubya usually frames as an attack on inside-the-Beltway "bickering"?does even more for Bush than it did for Clinton. Because, as E.J. points out, it permits Bush an excuse for distancing himself from an unpopular Republican Congress. The Republican Congress would not at present be unpopular if anyone thought about it. But the great truth that Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert has arrived at is that it helps Republicans if no one does think about it. He understands (as anyone who's followed the rhetoric of the New York and New Jersey Senate races understands) that Newt Gingrich's name is still toxic, and Hastert has done a masterful job of defusing all confrontations between Congress and Clinton.

But E.J.'s right that this climb-down has been well played by Bush. I'd add a couple more examples of his political brilliance. The first came during his Philadelphia acceptance speech when he undermined the most promising line in Gore's rhetoric?that Bush's tax cuts constituted a "risky scheme"?with easygoing humor. The Gore people used to love this line. They used it against Bob Dole to devastating effect in 1996. But once Bush launched his attack, they had to pack it up. "If my opponent had been at the moon launch," Bush said, "it would have been a risky rocket scheme. If he had been there when Edison was testing the lightbulb, it would have been a risky anti-candle scheme. And if he had been there when the Internet was invented..."

Here's another instance. During Debate #1, when the candidates were asked whether they disliked each other, Bush replied: Certainly not. After all, he said, his opponent "loves his wife." The implications of this statement echoed around viewers' heads for the rest of the evening. Yeah, he loves his wife, he really loves his wife, although it still mystifies me a good deal why he defended a president who whipped out his dick in front of a girl younger than your daughter!

Crunchy Like Nader So, crunch time comes now. New York Press gets published on (election) Tuesday, and I'm writing this the weekend before. Decent political journalists dare to be wrong, and I wouldn't be a decent political journalist if I didn't make some kind of prediction. Bush is going to win. It's unbelievable, given the economy that Al Gore gets to run on, but it's going to happen. The reason is that Gore's personality gives him a ceiling of popular support resembling Pat Buchanan's. It's not quite as low as Buchanan's, but it's low enough and it has the same source. There is a rock-hard majority of Americans?say, 54 percent in Gore's case?who think he's antithetical to what they believe the country stands for. So Gore could win 46-44, but he can't win 51-49.

Which brings us to Ralph Nader. Democrats cannot withstand a third-party challenge in the way that Republicans can. Remember that, since the founding of the Republican Party on the eve of the Civil War, only two Democratic presidential candidates have ever won more than 51 percent of the vote. (FDR did it four times, and LBJ won in a landslide in 1964.) The Democrats' barnstorming tour?sending various lefty pols like Ted Kennedy, Paul Wellstone and Barney Frank, along with celebrities like Melissa Etheridge and Rob Reiner, out to campaign against Nader?will backfire. Nader appeals to the man-on-a-white-horse fantasy of progressives, and this campaign only introduces him to left-wing voters who may not even have realized he was an option two weeks ago.

Last month, I thought half of Nader's vote would peel away, once Dems realized that a vote for Nader was a vote for Bush. (Which it indubitably is, although that may be half the point.) Now I think Nader's vote tallies are going to hold.

So here we go. No one can look with delight on the arrival in office of the dumbest president in American history. But anyone who can suppress a chuckle over the defeat of the most pompous presidential candidate in American history has a heart of stone.