Friday, Jul 4, 2008
Bradley and Gore bob and weave through their latest debate in New Hampshire.
Jan 6, 2000 | At Wednesday night's Democratic debate at the University of New Hampshire, presidential hopefuls Bill Bradley and Al Gore showed the seasoning that they've picked up from their four previous verbal matches.
Like boxers mid-bout, each has clearly figured out not only which of their punches will likely land, but also how best to defend against his opponent's attacks. It made for a pretty active night of sparring, the New Hampshire and MSNBC audience mercifully spared prior displays of Bradley's disgusted petulance and Gore's cloying hyperactivity.
For Bradley, that means waxing leader-like, talking up big ideas, trying to inspire Democratic voters by conjuring forth FDR and LBJ. No longer nearly as befuddled by Gore's attacks, Bradley still seemed somewhat irritated by some of Gore's charges -- even claiming to have been "offended" by Gore's charge that his health-care plan would disproportionately harm African-Americans and Latinos.
But Bradley landed some solid shots of his own, painting Gore as a typical pol hunkered down in a "Washington bunker." As for Gore's charge that Bradley didn't "stay and fight" in the Senate when he retired in 1996, Bradley said that plenty of Americans "think a lot of people in Washington stay too long and fight too much."
For his part, Gore seems to have finally adjusted the volume on his rhetorical stereo -- aggressively asserting his experience, challenging Bradley on his past votes and future plans, while staying away from the eardrum-shattering decibel blasts of debates past.
Casting his "I-get-knocked-down, but-I-get-up-again" pugilism as an asset for the American people, Gore tried to illustrate that Bradley is an aloof professor-type by asking him to admit that past Senate votes were mistakes. "The presidency is not an academic exercise," Gore sniped, "it's not an extended seminar on theory. It has to be a daily fight for people."
Gore argued that the presidency is a job that requires his kind of experience, as opposed to Bradley's fantasies, as manifest in the former New Jersey senator's health-care proposal. "The country can ill-afford big mistakes by a president who stumbles into something that could be avoided with the kind of judgment and experience people ought to expect in a president."
It was an interesting maneuver by Gore, trying to turn his legendary record of political missteps into a plus, and damn Bradley with his own self-righteousness.
Intimating that Bradley is aloof and incapable of admitting mistakes -- while he, conversely, is a fighter who is constantly learning -- Gore then asked Bradley if he regretted three Senate votes -- voting for the Reagan spending cuts, against Bush's call for military action against Iraq and against the Clinton welfare reform bill.
Bradley said that he didn't think any of the three votes were mistakes. If every senator had voted as he did -- for the Reagan spending cuts and against the Reagan tax cuts -- there would have been no deficit problem, Bradley countered. Welfare reform remains a bill he opposes as was military action against Iraq in its context.
Gore pointed out that Bradley hadn't uttered the word "mistake" once. "The country deserves a president who, when he makes a mistake, is willing to acknowledge it and willing to learn from it," Gore said. "The presidency is not an academic exercise."
"If you want me to admit a mistake so I can pass a litmus test," Bradley countered, "I voted against [Federal Reserve Chairman] Alan Greenspan the first time -- that was a mistake."
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