Where Have You Gone Alan Keyes?
"Man is puny in the face of destiny," proclaimed Marcus Aurelius. And Reality Check is puny in the face of modern punditry.
How puny?
The Reality Check research team has endeavored to find out exactly how many pundits, commentators, and assorted paid smarty-pants will be telling America what to think between the end of Tuesday night's debate and lunch on Wednesday.
The answer is 224.
Here's the empirical formula used by our numbers crunchers: the three broadcast networks will provide an average of eight pundits; the four all-news cable outfits average 15 analysts each; add in news Web sites (average of 2 pundits each), 5 national newspapers (5 each), 75 local newspapers (1 each), PBS and NPR (10 total). Talk radio and local TV news stations are too voluminous to factor.
Do the math and voila - 224 sets of opinions on 90 minutes of political speech. Everyone from Survivor's Richard Hatch to Senator Orrin Hatch will weigh in. And that's not counting focus groups, instant polls, dial-a-poll, and taxi drivers.
So what unique vantage can puny Reality Check possibly add to this Babel of Brilliance?
Well, for one thing, we miss Alan Keyes. Badly. We miss his deep bizarreness, his passionate non sequiturs, and the feeling he brought to the game that something requiring a call to 911 could occur at any moment.
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But that's old news. It's difficult to resist the temptation to assess Bush vs. Gore in terms of their neckwear - solid red. No patterns, no paisleys, stripes, no elephants or donkeys. A couple of scaredy-cats these guys are. It was a night without egregious whoppers or monstrous bloopers. There were no hilarious gag lines or withering put-downs. Rats.
Reality Check thought the lowlight of the evening came during the entrances when Gore, obviously stealing a page from his gender-gapping convention smooch, blew a kiss to someone in the audience, presumably Tipper. Mrs. Reality Check, however, strongly disagrees. So, never mind.
Gore predictably and skillfully used the techniques and head games that served him so well in his bouts with Ross Perot, Jack Kemp and Bill Bradley. He interrupted quite a bit - it drove Perot nuts, but Bush handled it. He had "real people" props planted in the audience, one of them a 70-year-old man who drove to Canada to get his prescription drugs. Another one had omething to do with a poodle. And Gore issued one of his traditional challenges, this time daring Bush to put Social Security in a "lockbox." Go to his Web site for details if you wish.
Mostly, Gore rattled Bush with his robotic and commanding recitation of facts, programs, and specifics. Gore seemed astoundingly composed and focused.
Bush, perhaps, seemed more uncalculated and earnest. At times, he also seemed to be just a few clauses away from a total verbal meltdown. But he always managed to save himself from total discombobulation.
Bush repeatedly referred to Gore as "the man" - and that's not as in, "You Da Man." Gore didn't seem to 'preciate it.
Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan certainly didn't 'preciate not being invited to the debates. It sure would have been more fun if they were there. Or maybe they could invite Alan Keyes instead.