BY THE END, the Gore campaign was nothing but a naked appeal to fear. Ed Asner warned Florida seniors, via a recorded telephone message, that if George W. Bush were elected, their social security benefits would be cut. Countless other voters listened to a Texas widow blame Bush for her husband's death in a nursing home. The NAACP ran a gruesome TV ad showing a pickup truck dragging a chain while the daughter of James Byrd suggested that Bush "killed" her father "all over again" when he opposed a 1999 revision of the Texas hate crimes law.
Ugly, nasty stuff. And entirely predictable. Months ago Gore's campaign manager described her operation as a "slaughterhouse" run by "killers." She meant it. As Gore himself meant it in 1991 when he summarized his views on running for president: "Rip the lungs out of anybody else who's in the race."
It's a vile way to seek the highest office in the land. But when you have spent eight years as Bill Clinton's understudy and you reek of his sleaze and deception, what option have you got but to try to make the other guy smell even worse?
The pollsters were right, for a change. This election really was too tight to call. The voters really did play this one close to the vest. But that in itself was a stinging rebuff to the scandal-ridden egotist in the White House. The last time a two-term president left office amid peace and prosperity, his vice president succeeded him in a 40-state landslide. Bill Clinton never had a prayer of doing for his veep what Ronald Reagan did for his. If it were truly the economy, stupid, Gore would have cakewalked into office yesterday. Instead he found himself biting his nails late into the night, wondering, perhaps, what low blow he had forgotten to deliver.
Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.
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