Culture Vultures: Retort From New Hampshire

...Dubya is a busy guy-speeches to give, foreign countries to mispronounce - b u t he gives effortlessly and generously, rubbing the small of my assistant's back, and locking her morn in a clinch at least thrice as long as any of his TV debate answers...

...I haven't seen such contempt for the little man since watching Pierre Trudeau campaign...

...Surely he had a view on it...

...Anyone not part of his media groupies would have to conclude the guy's either an idiot, a sloth who's winging it, or both...

...Legislators and activists can take care of themselves, but, in McGain's world, nobody's too lowly not to merit a kick in the crotch...

...Bush and Bradley are both obviously at ease with themselves...

...He's a good man...

...M-A-RK? Hmm" receiving-line routine...

...The questioner forbore to mention the governor's robust defense of Texas's anti-sodomy law, perhaps because some of us were still eating...

...I'm not saying it should be the deciding factor, like being able to identify the deputy finance minister of Papua New Guinea, but it is, I think, a telling one...

...How do you spell it...

...Do you know how painful it is for Granite Staters to have to endure our quadrennial invasion by the socially dysfunctional...

...He began by characterizing the governor's position on various policies as "discriminatory"-gays in the military, gay adoption, etc...

...But unlike General Wossname, Dubya was able to identify the head honcho of The American Spectator-- immediately, without prompting and without any clues...

...The death tax...

...But instead of raising doubts about the candidate's fitness for office, McCain's ignorance was simply...ignored...

...From the first time I saw McCain at Lebanon Airport, his approach to the average Republican voter has been (if The American Spectator _9 February 2 0 o o 47 you're lucky) off-hand and perfunctory or (if you're not) patronizing and abusive...

...In these pages, I recounted an exchange I'd had with Tuttle at the Tunbridge Fair about the crisis in Vermont education funding...

...Just because Senator-elect Rodham attributes her husband's difficulties to a dysfunctional family, that's no reason to pass a constitutional amendment and make a dysfunctional presidency mandatory...

...The Tuttle/Leahy race didn't need to spend any money because it wasn't a race at all: One side had been preemptively disenfranchised...

...He grinned at us goofily, like a high school jock doing a historical recitation: You have the unnerving feeling that, if he forgot a line, he'd have to go back to the beginning and start again...

...Then he moved in for the kill: How many teats does a cow have...

...He only has one speech and, lately, just for variation, he seems to have moved all the periods to the middle of the sentences: 'qqae best decision I ever made...

...So Massachusetts biz execs get them, but halfwit Vermont codgers don't...

...Indeed, they roundly mocked Dubya's father, who had the same inexhaustible appetite for foreigners that Bill Clinton has for cocktail waitresses...

...Gary Bauer, the diminutive Christian activist, recently said that gay marriage was more of a threat than terrorism...

...McCain and Gore are not--close up, both men seem like coiled springs, though for different reasons...

...Well, count me out...

...Mark...

...Raising two girls or running for president we need to lower taxes...

...But t-he most relevant point of comparison is that McCain, like Tuttle, is a dummy candidate in both senses of the word...

...I would rather see them work in computers...

...But pop quizzes are like being pulled over by state troopers: It's the political equivalent of racial profiling...

...Well, that's all too complicated for me," delivered with a smile, is the McCain line not just on education but health, taxation, defense spending, you name it...

...He was unable to recall the long-serving chief executive of the state he was campaigning in, until someone gave him a first nameHoward Something or other...

...48 Fe b r ua r y 2 o o o " The American Spectator...

...After all, as with Tuttle, he's anti-abortion, and come November that-and his record on gays, guns, and much else--will count for more when he's up against Gore or Bradley than it does when he's up against Forbes and Keyes...

...Dubya is a man who knows his priorities...

...As to "gay marriage," he thought that marriage ought to be between a man and a woman...

...Don't forget gay marriage," added Dubya, helpfully...

...But after you've seen McCain impugn the motives of a Republican state rep and inform the Right To Life activist that the pro-life crowd are no longer a genuine grassroots movement, you begin to wonder how many New Hampshire Republicans the senator's willing to insult to impress his big-town media chums...

...Softened up by plaudits from New York and Washington, the senator is slipping remorselessly to the left: In Iowa he called for subsidies for prescription drugs, and supported women in combat...

...and have enemies of the state summarily executed...

...Something similar would happen if McCain won the nomination...

...But his strategists--who are beginning to display alarmingly Dolesque tendencies--took the view that their man had to be protected-kept "scripted" and "inside the bubble...

...someone shouted...

...Boasting to Iowans that he opposes the ethanol subsidy conceivably comes under that heading...

...We're not talking Pakistani fly-by-nights or faceless North Korean apparatchiks here, but the elected leader of one of this country's closest friends, with a formidable political constituency in America...

...In Littleton, even though we were in the heart of the north country, where men are men, Dubya had apparently drawn the only fellow in town interested in gay issues...

...i.e., a Massachusetts multi-millionaire...

...George Bush Sr...

...Like my assistant--a Bob Smith gal until she felt the hot breath of Dubya on her lips- I, too, had experienced the electric tingle of the governor's fingers on my spine and, for the first time, found myself regretting his opposition to gay nuptials and pining wistfully for what might have been...

...A couple of days before Christmas, John McCain was in Vermont and was asked to name the state's governor and the Iris h prime minister...

...Ask McCain a question about his own tax proposals and he'll slough you offwith any old gibberish: In Iowa, he seemed to think his elimination of the marriage penalty would be a tax break for single morns...

...Was to marry my wife I don't know what's more difficult...

...What the media like about the senator is that he's "genuine" and "authentic...

...Pause...

...Scripted and inside the bubble, he sucks...

...Sir," sneered MeCain, "I did not know your ambitions were for your children to work in a textile mill...

...Long pause...

...Like Tuttle the dairy farmer, McCain the veteran represents a noble calling that the press sentimentalizes to assuage its own lack of interest: Tuttle and McCain are dairy farmers and POWs, so the rest of us don't have to be...

...The out-of-state press guys seem to look on this as evidence of McCain's principles, his courage, his honesty, his willingness to tell voters things they don't necessarily want to hear...

...McCain's glib and boorish and can't wait to get back to shooting the breeze with the press guys...

...But thanks to a Boston interviewer's surprise pop quiz, the nomination may be in doubt...

...Indeed, the McCain disdain (which his standard form of address, "My friends," only emphasizes) is so overwhelming that it took me a while to spot that the Fred Tuttle comparison goes beyond quiz questions: McCain is Tuttlel an old coot (albeit a less likable one) being run as a stooge candidate for the amusement of Democrats and the national media...

...One sees what he means, but to compare Vermont's gay wannabe-newlyweds to mad Algerian bombers tiptoeing down over the 49th Parallel is virtually a textbook definition of what the New York Times means by "mean-spirited...

...You meet Forbes and think, well, he'll be pleasant enough once the ice is broken, and eventually you realize it's like ice-out at Cummins Pond: You'll be waiting six months...

...Instead, they decided to keep him scripted and inside the bubble...

...If you'll forgive a touch of the Gail Sheehys, Gore's problem is that deep down he's riddled with self-doubt...

...Frankly, that's good enough for me...

...During the campaign "debate," Fred pushed a list of Vermont towns across the table and invited his opponent to pronounce them...

...It turned out to be: "What is your general philosophical position on homosexuality...

...Sometimes his mind wanders: At Littleton, he said, "We need to eliminate the death penalty in America...

...Like Tuttle, McCain is strongly in favor of campaign finance reform: For his Senate race, Fred spent $251--a buck for every Vermont town--which had the happy benefit of enabling Pat Leahy to keep his $75o,ooo war chest for a rainy day...

...But having observed both of 'em close up, I'd say the opposite is true: Dubya's great with the nobodies, makes them feel special...

...Who cares who's running Pakistan...

...Just over a year ago, I wrote about Fred Tuttle, the octogenarian dairy farmer put up by a wily Vermont Democrat to run in the Republican primary for the Senate race on the grounds that the favored candidate, Jack McMullen, was "a suntanner from away" This state's not big enough f o r t h e both of us...

...Unscripted and out of the bubble, Dubya is relaxed and affable, and every New Hampshirite who meets him likes him...

...If McCain wins on February 1, it will mean the New Hampshire primary is just another media event...

...The media have decided that McCain doesn't need pop quizzes: He knows their names, so to hell with the Irish...

...Well, that's fine if you don't mind living in a one-party state where the Republicans get the joke candidate and the Democrat victory is preordained...

...But as an objective political analyst, I have to concede the "Hey, we're all sinners" approach is ingenious...

...Likewise, fratboy presidential scions get them, but maverick Vietnam vets don't...

...Still, George W. Bush is at ease with himself, and if he and AI Gore get to be their respective parties' nominees, that will be the crucial difference...

...Dubya could have been a great New Hampshire candidate, a natural...

...That's nice, telling the guy his job's worthless and he's a career failure...

...He writes for The American Spectator...

...Death tax...

...I was halfway to the phone to call in my hot scoop when he corrected himself...

...The conventional wisdom is that, after our vote for Pat Buchanan in '9 6, the New Hampshire primary has a chance to redeem itself with McCain...

...The view from Washington is that Dubya's the remote, disengaged, hollow candidate and McCain connects with ordinary people...

...As I said at the time, MeMullen could easily have pushed back a list of G- 7 countries and invited Fred to name their capitals...

...Or, if they do, they don't count...

...Hey, we're all sinners, buddy," shmgged the governor, genially...

...Some activists were so impressed by Fred that at Vermont town meetings in 1998 they passed resolutions calling for campaign finance reform and citing the Tuttle/Leahy race as an example of the civilized discourse we would have if we just got all the money out of pofitics...

...Dubya's minders allowed the media to tag him as an airhead unable to concentrate on foreign policy-though, judging from the amount of coverage they give to foreign affairs, they presumably feel most of their viewers and readers fall into the same category...

...Whereas Emmett the Good will still be our executive supremo--unless, of course, by the time you read this, Clinton has taken advantage of the YzK meltdown to seize emergency powers MARK STEYN is theater critic of the New Criterion and movie critic of the Spectator of London...

...In fact, outside the bubble and unscripted, he's great...

...So in some reductio ad absurdum of our electronic democracy, he's decided that the way to get elected is to punch out the electors...

...I'm in favor of the death penalty...

...And having painstakingly cultivated every Sefior Zero and Monsieur Loozeur on the planet, he took great pleasure in dropping their names at campaign rallies in Idaho and Michigan under the touching delusion that this would impress his fellow Americans...

...In Littleton, Jerome Danin, a textile worker, said free trade was putting his boss out of business...

...Well, that's all too complicated for me," he mumbled, beaming, and wandered back to the pig racing...

...There's a strange symmetry to the primaries this year...

...Now admittedly Governor Bush said more or less the same thing about the new general in charge of Pakistan...

...couldn't wait to get to the office and start working the phones to the president of Brazil, the prime minister of Bulgaria, the deputy tourism and fisheries minister of the South Sandwich Islands...

...Anyway, having been introduced, Dubya slid round the table, slipped into the chair, slapped me on the back, and said, "You live here, big boy...

...Suddenly, it's an indispensable qualification for the job...

...He also has this endearing habit, whenever he's talking about something serious like defense or foreign affairs, of breaking into a boyish giggle, as if he can't quite believe he's made it through the sentence without mispronouncing East Timorania or confusing Slovenia with Slobodenia...

...It would have been electoral suicide, but at least it would have brought Vermonters face to face with what it was they were actually doing: nominating an idiot...

...If his campaign managers had let him meet more of'em, he'd be a shoo-in...

...To avoid distressing his friends in the media, he skipped the annual Gun Owners of New Hampshire dinner...

...By the time of the inauguration in January 2OOl, General Tweedlepaki will have been replaced by General Tweedlestan and will be lucky if he escapes the firing squad...

...But by now the crowd was restless: "Get to the question...

...He lives in New Hampshire...

...Like Tuttle's "bipartisan" appearances with incumbent Pat Leahy, McCain makes joint appearances with Democrat Bill Bradley...

...Hey," said Dubya...

...And by "working" I don't mean the Steve Forbes glassy-eyed "Hmm...

...Of all the possible permutations available in the New Hampshire primary, a McCain-Gore victory would be worst for our democracy...

...That's an interesting name...

...The press is right: One candidate is a bonehead who hasn't done his homework, but it's not George W. Bush...

...46 February 20 o o _9 The American Spectator Indeed...

...As with Turtle, those talking him up would like him to win the primary but not the election...

...Well, he is to them: He's funny, profane, indiscreet...

...by Mar k Steyn Retort From New Hampshire Dubya connects while McCain imitates Fred Tuttle...

...But he's bored by ordinary folks, and he's mean to them, too...

...This is Mark," said my assistant when the governor came up for air...

...He never got the Irish feller...

...Bush's inability to connect with ordinary people...

...McCain's problem is that he's not...

...In this primary campaign, no other candidate-Republican or Democrat--has called me "big boy...

...The columnists tell us be's a good fit: He's like us--cranky, independent, a little unpredictable...

...Emmett Tyrrell...

...A s for the surprise pop quiz, that's now a recurring feature of American democracy...

...At the time, this was taken as yet more evidence of Mr...