Drop the Big One
Memo to Bob Shrum: Your
candidate, Al Gore, needs to "strangle the baby in the bath"--that is, crush
Bill Bradley in both the Iowa caucuses next Monday and the New Hampshire primary eight days later. If Bradley gets
into the open field of the post-New Hampshire contests, he'll surely deplete
your campaign treasury, and he might just win. Unfortunately, the latest polls
from New Hampshire are all over the lot. The CBS and Newsweek polls show you ahead; the University of Massachusetts poll
shows Bradley beating you by 10 points. Other polls show a virtual tie. As you
know, New Hampshire voters can shift en masse in the final few days before the
primary--ask Walter Mondale. This year, they may be inclined to vote for
Bradley to "keep the contest going" and prevent you from wrapping it up.
It looks pretty iffy. Which is why sincerely I hope
you're busy finishing up the 30-second ads that can destroy Bradley in New
Hampshire, the ones highlighting his 1996 vote against welfare reform. Remember
the poll last fall that showed 38 percent of Democrats --let alone the all-important independents--thought less
of Bradley when told of his welfare vote? (That was twice as many as thought
better of him.) ... The welfare spots don't have to be harsh or anti-left. They
can be uplifting. Ex-welfare mothers going to work, earning income, gaining
respect ... and Bill Bradley voted against it! ... Bad man! ... Keep the ads in
the can and drop them on Bradley starting Jan. 25, the day after all those
liberal activists in the Iowa caucuses have had their say. ...
Jeffrey Toobin, Hypocrite, Part
II: In his book Vast Conspiracy , you'll
recall,
New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin denounces "sexual
investigative reporting" as "tawdry voyeurism" and "sleaze." But that doesn't
prevent him from recounting, on Page 53, the allegation of one Dennis Kirkland
that Paula Jones "gave him a 'blow job'" and that he'd seen her "giving blow
jobs to three of his friends, whom he named." Is that really relevant? Well,
maybe it is. What's inexcusable is that Toobin waits 100 pages to mention that
a) Kirkland is a convicted forger; who b) had had "five, six, seven, eight
even" beers the night in question; and c) hadn't actually seen Jones give the
serial blow jobs to his friends. Simple fairness should have suggested that
Toobin at least hint strongly during his initial presentation of Kirkland's
tale that it was uncorroborated and would later prove a problem for Clinton's
lawyers. Toobin could easily have done that while preserving narrative
suspense. ... He might also have mentioned that none of Kirkland's friends
backed up the allegations. ... But then, actually checking out and evaluating a
story like that is "sexual investigative reporting," isn't it? ...
Plotting the Perfect
Kausfiles Vacation!
Kausfiles is always willing to follow the innovative lead of its
fellow start-up publication, Talk magazine. This
month's Talk features a charming six-page travel
section entitled "Chasing Mr. Ripley," a tour of Italy keyed to the locations
used in The Talented Mr. Ripley , the movie
everyone's talking about. ... OK, nobody's talking about it, but it does just
happen to be produced by Harvey Weinstein's Miramax Films, which co-owns
Talk , and which certainly hoped that people would be talking about it. In this synergistic
spirit, kausfiles dispatched Raoul Danto, one of
its top doppelgängers, on a no-expense-spared quest to map out the ultimate,
self-promotional kausfiles holiday. He filed this
report:
Planning the perfect
kausfiles vacation can be tough to do, because
basically this guy just sits around his living room staring at his Toshiba
laptop. Sometimes in his bathrobe! This can be a little disorienting for the
dedicated kausfiles vacationer. Just getting out of
bed and eating breakfast is a day's travel for the new Web publication's
editor! "Think of it as a mosaic, a jigsaw puzzle," he said when I rang him for
help. "The map of kausfiles bears little relation
to a real map. It's a map of kausfiles' head."
The trick, of course, is not to get too literal-minded.
(It's not that big an apartment. And he's out of milk.) But a rough kausfiles
tour might start at the picturesque ethnic JJ Fresh
Produce, across the street from the kausfiles pensione in Battery Park City, New York. (Think Alphaville
meets Last Year at Marienbad .) Say hi to Sam, the counter man. Then it's off to catch the
Metroliner to sun-dappled Washington, D.C. Visit the romantic Brookings
Institution--economist Gary Burtless greets you at the door!--and browse the
bookstore for the latest on Section 8 housing vouchers. Try not to buy too
much! ... Next, grab a cab to Capitol Hill to the forbidding
12 th -century castle, funded with MacArthur
genius grants, that houses the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, where
you'll swap food-stamp statistics with Robert Greenstein and Wendell Primus!
... A quick subway ride and you're at the C.F. Folks luncheonette, where Art,
the owner, will tell you his plan to save Social Security and what he really
thinks of New Republic editor-in-chief Marty
Peretz. But don't dawdle, because you have to catch the train back to New York
in time to file. ... It's granola bars in the dinette car for dinner (stay away
from the Amtrak pizza!) as you unpack your complimentary Heritage Foundation
tote bag to discover your own personalized copy of the 1998 Green Book,
Background Material and Data on Programs Within the Jurisdiction of the
Committee on Ways and Means! ... Before you know it,
you're at Penn Station, out of cash. Take the 2 subway home. Get off at the
wrong stop. You're in trendy Tribeca! Matt Damon lives around here somewhere
...
