Loyal Opposition

David Corn's
Loyal Opposition

Wednesday, November 11, 1999

The Boy-Veep Who Called Wolf

Scene: a prairie farmhouse.

There's a knock at the door. A woman stands in the cold. She smiles. "Hi, my name is Naomi. I'm a volunteer -- well, not exactly -- for the Gore campaign, and I'm taking time off from writing books on female empowerment to go door-to-door here in Iowa. Can I talk to you a moment? Do you feel an absence of power in your life? Is there a greater strength, an external strength, that you desire? After all, in this age of poll-driven, blow-dried, feel-your-pain politicians, wouldn't you like to see a candidate demonstrate he -- and I do mean he -- is a real man? Wouldn't you want to vote for a man who seems like a son you can trust and a brute who had the might to kill his father? I don't mean that literally. But let's say he could, if he wanted to. Wouldn't you feel more secure in your home here, if we had in the White House a President who really is the king of the tribe? And one who wears earth tones. Here's a flyer for Al Gore. And, let me ask you one more question. It's for further campaign research. How do you feel about angels?"

There are moments in presidential campaigns that we later look back upon and say, that was when it became obvious that candidate such-and-such had no chance of becoming the nation's top-dog. Recall Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis behelmeted and riding in a tank. Uncomfortable smile. Looked like Snoopy. The election could have been canceled the moment that photo hit. Then there was President George Bush in 1992 checking his watch during the debate with that young go-getter from Arkansas. The nation was still shaking free of a traumatizing recession, but Mr. Gulf War was worrying about his next appointment. Sorry, the voters have no time for you.

There's a chance the Naomi Wolf eruption -- which dominated political chat last week -- will be the we-knew-it-then moment for Al Gore's campaign. The news that Gore was paying Swami Naomi $15,000 a month (later cut back to $5000) for advice on how Gore could transform himself from beta- to alpha-male reinforced the notion, true or not, that Gore is lost within himself, that he is not sure who or what he is, that he has to pay someone to help him develop not a campaign strategy (we're used to that sort of political consulting) but a personality. I have a nodding acquaintance with Wolf and have no problem with Gore picking her brain. She's a quirky thinker and, no doubt, might toss out a high-concept (The Protective Daddy, The Respected Big Brother, The Resourceful Cousin) that could trigger an useful idea for Gore. But could those nuggets be worth $180,000 a year? As described in the press, one of her missions was to guide Gore in the journey from loyal-buddy beta male to big-ape alpha male -- a process in which he would have to challenge our current monkey-in-chief to prove himself. There was an inherent problem in this project. An alpha male shouldn't need advice -- certainly not from a female (!) -- on how to be an alpha man. It's as if Gore had contracted with a consultant for guts lessons. For her part, Wolf maintained she barely mentioned alphas and betas and that the advice she supplied -- which was paid for through a cutout -- focused on women's concerns.

If she did give Gore the alpha talk, Wolf would have been reacting to a no-shit-Sherlock observation about Gore's image problem. But one does not need to spout new-age razzmajazz to diagnose it. Forget the Greek letters. Gore's dilemma can be explained by the Geek Theory of Presidential Politics. Rule One: geeks lose. Rule Two, when the contest is between two geeks, the geekier one loses. Let's look at recent history. Dwight D. Eisenhower versus Adlai Stevenson in 1952. A general who had won the biggest war in history against an egghead governor. No-brainer. Stevenson proved he was truly a geek by running against Ike again in 1956 -- and losing by a larger amount. Then it was John Kennedy and Vice President Richard Nixon, who established the modern-day precedent of the veep-geek. Only Kennedy's Catholicism made this contest a squeaker. Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater in 1964. Admittedly, neither stood out as a geek. But Goldwater did wear those thick-frame eyeglasses. The next race poses trouble for the theory: Nixon running against Vice President Hubert Humphrey. There is no clear geek gap in Nixon's favor. But the Vietnam war played badly for Humphrey. Moreover, Humphrey was now veep, and Nixon no longer was -- so that made Humphrey the geek by default. Next came Nixon and George McGovern. The Democrat was a former fighter pilot and no geek. But in an era of rage and protest, the Nixon campaign succeeded in depicting McGovern as a fringe candidate. The politics of fear trumped the geek theory that time out.

Jimmy Carter and stand-in President Gerald Ford: the faux-President was ridiculed for his haplessness -- a geek trait -- and lost to the earnest Southern who hid his geekness behind that why-not-the-best smile. When Carter turned out to be a geek-president -- remember the photo of him collapsing while jogging? -- actor Ronald Reagan bounced him out of office. Former Vice President Walter Mondale was the geekiest Democratic nominee since Stevenson. He had no chance in 1984 against Reagan the brushclearing horseman. The Dukakis-Bush contest was a geek face-off (Bush even had to deny he was a "wimp") that proved Rule Two. Four years later, Bush was challenged by Clinton -- whose geeky policy wonk tendencies were trumped by his much-too healthy Bubba side -- and Bush joined one of the most exclusive geek societies in the world: incumbent presidents who have lost reelection campaigns. There was no geek in the Clinton-Dole duel of 1996. In this instance, a rascally BMOC defeated a past-his-prime grump.

Americans don't like geeks in the Oval Office. There's good reason for this. The president is the symbolic leader of the nation, as well as the person who is supposed to manage the executive branch. The two jobs don't necessarily require the same talents. (Most West European nations sensibly leave the symbolism to royalty or ceremonial presidencies.) Gore fell into the geek category early in the Clinton years -- and he fell hard. His advocacy of the Internet -- a plastic-pocket-protector issue if there ever was one -- didn't help. His stiffness, which is not apparent in one-on-one meetings, became an over-milked joke. He became a caricature: the classic overachieving nerd.

It's probably too late for Gore to go from geek to non-geek. (Sorry, Naomi.) Fortunately for him, his Democratic opponent, Bill Bradley, displays several prime geek characteristics: he obsesses over obscure issues, he ponders on his own and not with others, he can be boring. But no athletic legend is a geek. What Gore has going for him is that the Geek Theory does not apply to primary contests. In such races, the electorate is small enough to allow a geek to succeed. After all, primary voters did nominate Bush, Dukakis, and Mondale. (Steve Forbes, take heart.) But should Gore survive the Bradley assault, he will likely find himself facing either George W. Bush, who the geek-gene has apparently skipped over, or John McCain, a former POW and, consequently, an automatic non-geek. Gore cannot out-alpha these males. The Wolf-hoohah makes that clear. So what can Gore do? I'm not saying -- until he pays me $15,000 a month.

The Wrath of Jude

Two weeks ago, I reported on my visit to Pat Buchanan's book party at a fancy Washington steakhouse and detailed an encounter with Jude Wanniski, the supply-side evangelist who now says he is informally advising Buchanan. I noted that Wanniski was praising Farrakhan as a sincere "man of God" -- much to the chagrin of his conversation partner, John Lofton, a religious right columnist. I also related what Wanniski said after I asked him why he was not on the Forbes bandwagon. He explained that the folks running the Forbes show were "white supremacists," though Wanniski, who is white, did add that he believed most white people are benign white supremacists.

Wanniski did not enjoy my account of our conversation. He sent an email to several heavies in the media business -- John McLaughlin, Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post, Bob Novak -- and decried me as an "incompetent journalist" and a "slimeball." He did not challenge any of the quotes. Nor did he defend his positions. He resorted to that all-too common defense of one whom is quoted accurately but inconveniently. He said his remarks were taken out of context. But what mitigating context can there be for his praise of Farrakhan or his remarks about the "white supremacists" of the Forbes campaign?

Wanniksi's attack prompted me to check out a file on him that a reader had sent me after the initial column. It offered many reasons why one should not take offense at being slurred by this false prophet. (He has no economic training; naturally, his pet theory became the basis of Reaganomics.) For years, Wanniski, who has a firm that monitors political and economic trends for money managers, has been courting Farrakhan. The New Republic reported in 1997 that he recruited Farrakhan for an annual client conferences in Boca Raton, Florida. Regarding Farrakhan's reputation as an anti-Semite, Wanniski told the magazine: "Farrakhan has every reason to be disturbed at being on that inferior side of the [racial] divide. On the white side, there is of course little doubt that pound for pound American Jews are the most powerful and influential of all segments of our society -- in every professional field of endeavor. In addition, their history asserts a claim of superiority that has made Jews of all people the most resistant to intermarriage with non-Jews." It seems as if Wanniski was defending -- or sympathetically explaining -- Farrakhan's anti-Semitism. Sounds as if Wanniski and Farrakhan share a patch of common ground on the Jewish issue. Wanniski also has tried to join forces with conspiracy-crank Lyndon LaRouche, who is infamous for claiming the Queen Elizabeth heads a global drug-running outfit. A 1996 Business Week article reported that Wanniski had hired several LaRouche followers. As for his relationship with Forbes, the record is clear. After he pushed Forbes to enter the race in 1996 and joined his campaign, Wanniski -- who is refreshingly outspoken but bereft of political judgment -- attacked Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed. That was a no-no in the Republican primaries. I should have remembered that. But that episode did not figure in Wanniski's explanation of his split with Forbes.

Routinely, articles depict Wanniski as a relentless and crazed self-promoter who champions one hobbyhorse after another and who barrages friends and foes with faxes. One infamous June 1992 fax to his clients proclaimed, "We can now confidently predict H. Ross Perot will be elected President of the United States, probably by a landslide." (Will his advice to Buchanan be as valuable as this prognostication?) A 1996 profile of Wanniski by Andrew Ferguson in The Weekly Standard summed him up this way: "Forward-looking. Optimistic. Delusional." He long ago became an embarrassment to Republicans. George Will, for what it's worth, called him a "crackpot." To be slimed by a fellow who cozied up to Farrakhan and LaRouche and who perpetuated an economic fraud on this nation with his groundless supply-side theory is an honor.

Loyal Opposition appears weekly in The New York Press.

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