Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, November 15, 1993 TAG: 9311160263
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: EDITORIAL EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: George F. Will
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Perot played a large part in the mincing. With a testiness that is an attribute of tycoons surrounded by compliant subordinates and outsiders starstruck by vast wealth, Perot revealed himself, redundantly, to be unpleasant. But Gore did the heavy lifting. He enabled television to do what it does best: stare without blinking at someone who has an insuppressible urge to go too far.
It is possible to hope that this was one of those rare moments when television was not only not a net subtraction from America's understanding, but actually may have served the public good by greasing the skids under a very slippery performer. Perhaps the ``debate'' will do for Perot what Joe McCarthy's televised exchange with the attorney Joseph Welch did for McCarthy back in 1954. It may cause the gas to rush from the balloon.
Gore was debating at a severe disadvantage. Gore has an intellectual conscience - or at least as much of one as is consistent with lifetime residence in the political class. That may not be all the conscience regarding facts that we would like, but is much more than Perot has.
Put plainly (as that proud plain-speaker says he prefers things to be put), Perot is an intellectual sociopath. He is not just hostile to the truth - we all are on those occasions when it is insupportably inconvenient. Perot is indifferent to the truth, which is a more remarkable and sinister attribute.
Someone - Churchill, I think - once described an adversary as not quite indifferent to the truth but that if by chance this person stumbled over the truth, he picked himself up and dusted himself off and walked on as though nothing had happened. Perot is like that.
Gore saw this as an opportunity and made the most of it, and no one can ever indict him for relying on style over substance. His performance was a combination of decorous hardball, plodding anecdotes and a recitation of relevant numbers. It had the kick of that Tennessee whisky that was the subject of one of the debate's murkier moments.
What must Perot - the Texas tough guy who usually avoids close questioning - have thought as the minutes ticked by with the subject of the proceedings being him and his son and their lobbying for their federally approved Fort Worth airport venture? And how delicious it was to see Perot having to hear his own nutty words, like echoes from a political amusement park, concerning the slew of banks that would fail immediately after the election.
And then there was Gore's reminder of Perot's certitude about the huge casualties that were certain to result from the Gulf War. Perot's source for that was probably the same sort who told him Republicans were hatching a plot to disrupt his daughter's wedding. Or perhaps Perot's source then was the one now telling him that some Cubans and ``Mafia-like'' men - or are they members of the Cuban Mafia? - at any rate, whoever they are, some folks with strong feelings about NAFTA are planning to kill him.
The debate enabled Gore to define the fundamental point: For America to reject NAFTA out of fear of the slow and partial liberalization of trade with an economy 4 percent the size of ours would be for America to adopt a cringing, flinching, whining, frightened stance toward the world. That is Perot's stance.
NAFTA probably will pass because enough votes are for sale and the president is buying. The president has at his disposal all the spending, borrowing, subsidizing and regulating powers of modern government. This spectacle is neither pretty nor inexpensive but it has one lovely aspect.
By one of the nicer carom shots of contemporary politics, an unsightly process may have the ancillary effect of moving the unsightly presence of Perot back to the margins of public discourse where he belongs. Washington Post
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