In the final debate, a classic Gore moment came when Bush asserted that Gore's promised federal handouts would require three times the spending Clinton had proposed. Gore butted in, as he is wont to do, with this dazzling retort: "That's in an ad, Jim, that was knocked down by the journalists who analyzed the ad and said it was misleading."
Oh -- "journalists" said it was misleading, did they? A quick Lexis-Nexis search turned up just who these "journalists" are. Amazingly enough, it was The New York Times (!) which, in another couple of weeks, will be topping off its daily campaign propaganda for Gore with an official Gore endorsement. Gore might as well have protested that Clinton had called the ad "misleading."
In fact, even Gore's adjunct staff at the "Newspaper of Record" didn't say what Gore said they said. The Times' claimed only that the ad's 10-second description of Bush's proposed tax cuts was "somewhat misleading" because it was based on a family with two children. "Single people and families with fewer than two children," the Times alerted its readers, "would not fare as well."
Interestingly enough, though, the Times did not contest the ad's assertions about Gore's gargantuan spending plans. Indeed, the Times' "accuracy"-meter supported Bush's claim that Gore's spending plans are three times what Clinton had proposed -- leaping in only to defend Clinton on the grounds that he had "made his proposals at a time when the government was running a record budget deficit and was constrained from expanding or adding programs."
Bush responded to Gore's jackass interruption by saying: "Forget the journalists. You propose more than Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis combined. In other words -- this is a big spender ..."
When the moderator tried to move on, Fibber McGee butted in ("I've got to answer that, Jim") and again demanded that due obeisance be paid "the journalists." The journalists, Gore proclaimed, "are the keepers of the scorecard."
Unfortunately for Gore, every four years the American people get to replace the journalists as "keepers of the scorecard." The journalists' "scorecard" said that Clinton became a more popular president with each additional felony he committed. Now they say Norman Bates-cum Tracy Flick must be president. Forget the journalists. This time, the American people get to vote in the only poll that really counts.