We interrupt the confessionals with Oprah and the joke-a-thons with Leno and Letterman to bring you 90 minutes of real issues debate tonight between Al Gore and George W. Bush. Though, at this point you wonder: Can straight talk with Jim Lehrer about the solid stuff of presidential management ever be as important as the body-language of Bush’s dark-shirt dressing up to look like Regis Philbin, or Al Gore’s tortured decision not to kiss the queen of our afternoons, Ms. Winfrey?
Bussing turns out to be a main matter in Campaign 2000–not forced school bussing, but whom to kiss and how intimately, for how long? This is the subliminable or surreal campaign which, in peace and prosperity, may have eclipsed the real politics of old. How do you score the emphasis on Laura Bush’s painful pregnancy, Tipper Gore’s grandchild, George W.’s drinking years, Al Gore’s being born again?
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
Camille Paglia, Author of “Sexual Personae”
Christopher Hitchens, columnist for The Nation
Andrew Sullivan, Contributing Editor at The New Republic
Mark Jurkovits, correspondent for the Boston Globe