Joke's on You
Eight
years ago, Al Gore and his fellow Democrats had great sport with the gaffes of
Vice President Dan Quayle. You remember the jokes: Quayle misspelled "potato,"
botched the United Negro College Fund slogan ("What a waste it is to lose one's
mind"), etc. A few months ago, Republicans turned this tactic on Gore, mocking
his suggestion that he had helped "create the Internet." Now Gore is applying
the same derision to George W. Bush. All three episodes illustrate an important
principle of negative campaigning: If you don't have something nice to say
about someone, say it with humor.
In a
CNN interview eight months ago, Gore asserted, "During my service in the United
States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." A day later,
House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, told the Associated Press he had
"cracked up" over Gore's claim: "If the vice president created the Internet,
then I created the interstate highway system." In a satirical press release,
Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., exclaimed, "I had no idea my friend Al Gore
created the Internet." The Republican Leadership Council aired TV ads linking
Gore's Internet claim to similar assertions that he "lived on a farm" and
"undertook the task to reinvent the Federal government." The ad accused Gore of
"trying to reinvent reality."
The
Gore jokes, like the Quayle jokes, poisoned their target without projecting
malice. They seized on a single misstatement, exaggerated it, and inflated it
into a comprehensive critique of the candidate. In each case, the statement was
useful to the candidate's enemies because it touched on a weakness that 1) was
similarly reflected in other comments by the candidate and 2) directly
undermined his campaign rationale. In Quayle's case, the rationale was national
security, and the weakness was stupidity. In Gore's case, the rationale is
economic progress, and the weakness is taking undue credit.
If
Gore had called Quayle a "fool," Gore would have looked mean, and swing voters,
being suspicious, would have doubted the charge. If Armey had called Gore a
"liar," these voters would have assumed that Armey was lying about Gore. The
way to slip the accusation past this barrier of incredulity is to pose the idea
indirectly, through satire--to savage your enemy with a smile. Once the idea is
planted in the voter's head this way, the voter thinks it was his idea to begin
with--and he begins to embellish it. The next time Quayle makes a mistake, the
voter thinks to himself, "There goes that Quayle again. What a moron."
Bush
has gradually applied this lesson to his criticism of Gore. In his campaign
kickoff speech last June, Bush was too heavy-handed: "Some in this
administration think they invented [prosperity]. But they did not invent
prosperity, any more than they invented the Internet." By October, however,
Bush had lightened his touch: "If [what Clinton and Gore have done] is
reinventing government, it makes you wonder how this administration was ever
skilled enough and efficient enough to create the Internet."
This
week, Gore returned the favor. Tuesday morning, radio talk show host Don Imus
asked Gore whether Bush should "have been able to identify the leaders of
Taiwan, India, Pakistan, and Chechnya" when Bush was quizzed about those
countries a week ago. In the quiz, Bush had failed to name three of those
leaders and had asserted that the leader of Pakistan, a general who had
overthrown the country's elected government, recently "took over office … is
going to bring stability to the country, and I think that's good news for the
subcontinent." Here's how Gore answered Imus' question:
"I
sympathize with those who say that that's not really a fair test. I think that
it is troubling that he didn't know [that] it's important to stand up for
democracy, and that a military coup overthrowing a democracy is not good news.
And I think it's important … and troubling that he didn't know it's in our
interests to stop the spread of nuclear weapons with the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty. I mean, this is a part of the world where it's probably most likely
that you're going to see serious problems in the future unless something's
done."
Gore
went on: "But not knowing the names … I think that's kind of understandable. I
mean, the other day I was talking to Otkir Sultonov. You know, the prime
minister of Uzbekistan. And he asked me, 'Did you send a birthday card to
Hamed?' That's of course Hamed Karoui, the prime minister of Tunisia. I had
just been talking about him with Ion Sturza, the prime minister of Moldova.
We're old friends. We actually met through a mutual friend, Lennart Meri, the
president of Estonia, of course."
Imus
ribbed Gore over the joke, and the media have been playing with it ever since.
"WITH TONGUE IN CHEEK, AL GORES BUSH," roared the New York Post . "GORE
THROWS IMUS A RADIO FUNNY BONE," agreed the New York Daily News .
Gore's
joke may look funny, but as a political kidney punch, it's dead serious. Bush's
campaign rationale is that he'll keep America strong and make Americans proud.
His weakness is that he's ignorant of world affairs ("Grecians," "Kosovians,"
etc.) and has a track record as a bad and indifferent student. By criticizing
Bush's answers to the world affairs quiz, Gore is trying to inflate Bush's
weakness and discredit Bush's rationale. And by following up his serious
accusation (i.e., that Bush showed indifference to the Pakistani coup and
ignorance of the region's nuclear importance) with a lighthearted recitation of
the leaders of obscure countries, Gore is sugarcoating his indictment of Bush
so that listeners will laugh, swallow, and absorb it.
It's true that Democrats
cynically oversimplified Quayle's blunders. It's equally true that Republicans
cynically oversimplified Gore's statement about the Internet. And it's true
that Gore is now doing the same to Bush. But it's also true that in every case,
these cynical charges have stuck. You call this tactic outrageous? C'mon,
lighten up.
