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A big smile, Al
by John A. Jackson
The presidential campaign debates begin next week and I can hardly contain my eagerness. They are the election's beating heart.
If not as exhilarating as the Olympics, they can be at least as memorable. Recall, if you are old enough, the night back in 1960 when Jack Kennedy took down Dick Nixon.
Do you suppose someone advised Kennedy to look especially gorgeous that evening? Taking notes more than watching, I thought Nixon held his own. Always swayed by a beautiful face, history judged otherwise.
But how stern the two men looked! As if world crisis already grimaced out at them and they were trying to stare it down. The world has changed since then, and television, too. These are friendlier times.
Which brings me to Vice President Gore, for whom I have some sharp advice.
As a people, we Americans vastly prefer confidence and good cheer to dour and tight-lipped thought, however justified. When your opponent attacks you, beam back a steady smile, Mr. Vice President, and the electorate, like Tipper, will be yours. George W. Bush will drop like ripe fruit from a tree.
When the current President is criticized, and he will be, just keep on smiling, perhaps with a little pity on your face. The more strongly you defend Mr. Clinton's and your administration's record, the more the voters will love it. Waver, however, and tigers will eat your flesh.
Conventional wisdom calls you "wooden," but your face becomes quite human when you smile. The bigger the smile, the better. The more confident you seem, you closer to the Oval Office you become. Wasn't that Ronald Reagan's lesson? Well, use it against the GOP.
And your opponent? When Governor Bush smiles, he looks exactly like Alfred E. Newman, Mad Magazine's mascot. But he cannot have much to smile about. His position is critic. If you are not horrible, why vote for him? He must show you wrong and then prove himself right.
That double message will not be easy for him to get across. Not on television.
Governor Bush's father lost the presidency because he showed himself unable to respond to a national crisis, the economic stagnation produced in large part by his and Reagan's tremendous budget deficits.
Bush's one real attempt to respond -- the tax increase of 1990, wasn't it? -- simply destroyed his credibility. The voters had read his lips. After that, he stood flatfooted and clueless while the nation's house fell down.
The Vice President has perhaps too many ideas, too complicated responses to too many issues. But a principled paralysis is not his style. In this way if not in some others, Gore may resemble Franklin Roosevelt. His task in the debates -- the historic task for pragmatic Democrats -- is to cast his opponent as Herbert Hoover, helpless and clueless as crisis worsens. Roosevelt, too, always knew how to grin.
A president of the United States must never look helpless. He must always exhibit confidence. Whatever the real situation.
Next week will show if Gore can paint Bush as another Hoover, or as a clone of his father. But above all, Gore must keep smiling.
It should prove interesting to see.
(ITALICS)John Jackson may be reached at TomShadwell@cs.com. (END ITALICS)ER