In Refreshing Shift, Gore And Kemp Get To Issues And Ideas
And so, finally, conflict. Not only conflict for its own sake, but a serious ideological clash.
Vice President Al Gore and GOP vice presidential nominee Jack Kemp don’t agree on much, and Wednesday night they had a debate that was worthy of the name, and of democracy itself.
The much-ballyhooed meeting of the two men at the bottom of their respective tickets may have been a preview of the presidential election in the year 2000. And if it was, it offered a hint of the real conflicts that have been hidden in the din of the 1996 election.
Gore and Kemp probably didn’t change many, if any, minds last night; debates seldom do that, and vice presidential debates hardly ever do. So the two, unlike the presidential candidates Sunday night, could toss restraint to the wind.
They could, for example, actually debate whether the Republican supply-side theory would “blow a hole in the deficit,” as Gore said, or unleash the potential of the American people and the economy, as Kemp said.
They could debate whether the nation was “overtaxed” and “overregulated,” as Kemp argued, or whether government still had a guardian role, as Gore has suggested.
They could discuss whether affirmative action plans could bring America “its brightest days,” as Gore said, or whether such plans seek to assure what Kemp called an artificial “equality of outcome.”
After weeks of negative ads, snide asides and a peculiarly contentless form of politics, the discussion between two candidates for a job often derided for its uselessness was useful in the extreme.
It was a reminder, so necessary in such an arid political landscape, that politics, even in the postmodern period, has consequences.
It’s still 49 months before the next election, but Gore and Kemp have already been matched as rivals, and if you were looking for indications of what the debates of the future might be like, you were given some food for thought.The two seemed remarkably well matched. One was born to politics, one adopted it as a second career. One has had to battle his own introspection, the other has had to bring his enthusiasm under control. One pushed his party on the environment, one on the economy.
But for all their differences, Gore and Kemp displayed striking similarities last night: a touch of vision, a pinch of passion, a dash of humanity and enough native optimism to make a cup runneth over.
Did last night make a difference? Maybe not, despite the confident assertions you will see on the television interview shows this morning.
But earlier vice presidential debates were memorable only for gaffes and jabs - Dole’s remarks on “Democrat wars” in 1976, Vice President George Bush’s unmistakable contempt for Rep. Geraldine A. Ferraro in 1984; Sen. Lloyd M. Bentsen’s assertion that Sen. Dan Quayle was “no Jack Kennedy” in 1988.
By contrast, Wednesday night might be remembered as a conversation with content. That itself makes for a difference.