Pablum Hits The Fan

It would not be fair to call the third presidential debate tedious. By now, the realization is dawning that, as improbable as it seems, one of these two men is going to be president of the United States next January. There will be no reprieve, no third candidate ascending from the ether to save us. This is it. So, being bored is not an option.

But watching our two tigers have at it this time was like watching an old married couple argue over ancient differences and presumed wrongs that have been carefully nurtured over the years. Each candidate spoke with mannered certitude, but without passion, as though he was reciting a memorized litany of bile and grievances.

And both candidates had a wheelbarrow full of pablum ready to spoon out. Gore the visionary on the Middle East: "I see a future when the world is at peace, with the United States of America promoting the values of democracy and human rights and freedom all around the world."

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So now we have gone through three mind-numbing sessions of regurgitated rhetoric and rehearsed retorts. One topic was conspicuously, glaringly absent: the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton.

Is it craven to want to hear what the candidates have to say about the impeachment saga? I don't think so. It was, after all, the dominant political event of the decade. Wouldn't it be relevant for the voters to know, for example, just what these guys think impeachable offenses are?

Peter Baker, a reporter for The Washington Post who has penned a book about the impeachment, wrote in an op-ed piece in the Post: "both candidates and their parties have entered into a conspiracy of silence on a topic sure to divide them and the public…. There's a strange sense of disconnect when the two political parties that waged all-out political and constitutional war in 1998 and 1999 now act as if it never happened."

There is no mystery about why the candidates treat the impeachment like Grandpa's Goiter. Gore doesn't want to be associated with the whole fiasco and Bush doesn't want to linked to the Republican persecutors or the stench of scandal. And that is exactly why God invented moderators - to ask the debaters questions that they don't want to be asked.

But perhaps Jim Lehrer has been getting his topics from that portable focus group of "real people" that Gore akes around with him. In case you missed the news, the vice president of the United States was tutored for the final debate by 10 "average citizens" who prepped him for the first two debates, and by another 13 fresh Missourians.

Gore, of course, likes to take advice and amend for his mistakes. Told he was too stiff, Gore donned earth tones. Too Washington, he moved the campaign to Nashville. Too, unemotional, he kissed Tipper. Too mean in the first debate, he apologized in the next one.

What advice did Al's real people have? "He needs to be himself," said Claudia Amboyer, a sixth grade teacher in Michigan. "Be yourself, no matter what people tell you," said a psychologist from St. Louis.

"Okay, just one problem," said the vice president. "Who am I?"

Reality Check has learned that if polls show Gore's still in trouble after this debate, he'll act on one other suggestion from his personal focus group and announce that his entire Cabinet will consist of real people. In earth tones. In Nashville.

And Bush will simply remind likely voters, as he did Leo tonight, that "elections are very serious business."