As the campaign draws to an end, the question of character slowly makes its way to the foreground. After the one-thousandth exchange on Social Security and medical care and education, the public gets around to recognizing that the Social Security trust fund IOUs are a government obligation and will be redeemed; something or other about prescription drugs is going to happen, whoever wins; and children will, under varying stresses and strains, get educated -- or won't. That's why the public is increasingly interested in questions of character.
The focus of the Gore offensive is on the shallowness of George W. Bush. The Gore people are saying that Bush is "inexperienced." That means, at a formal level, that he hasn't had high-ranking Washington job experience, but the public is encouraged to go on to believe that the kind of experience he lacks is genetically denied to him.
The misgivings about Al Gore have to do with character, and have most recently emphasized his unruly behavior in the television debates, together with his penchant for dramatizing his own life and experience. It is mostly this that has been specifically singled out for criticism, the capacity simply to improvise stories that illuminate those aspects of his life that would most attract admiration.
But more important than that has to be his hunger, his aching, irrepressible hunger, to achieve the presidency. He was certainly warned by his counselors not to interrupt after the first debate, not to insist on the last word. He could not control himself. That consuming desire to score can bring on lapses in taste that even presidential candidates should be denied.
Herewith Tucker Carlson observing Mr. Gore on the road, for The Weekly Standard. Next on his schedule: an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show. Nothing much more needs to be said about Oprah than that she is enormously influential and therefore it pays to be nice to her. Well, we should be nice to everybody, whether they are influential or not. But Gore arrived at Oprah's studio having spent who knows how many hours studying up about her. He knew the call letters of the radio station where she worked as a teen-ager, if you can believe it.