Too Soon, Too Soon

By Rick Horowitz

I'd like you to do something for me. I'd like you to stick close to me for the next 18 months or so, close enough to hear every word I utter. And if even once during that time I happen to say anything like, "I know -- let's spend the weekend listening to all the Republican presidential candidates!" I'd like you to take me out and shoot me.

Can you do that for me? Please?

I ask you: How bleak does one's existence have to be, how utterly lacking in anything even remotely stimulating or inspiring, to make a person decide to spend three days in Indianapolis in the summer of 1997 listening to an assortment of phrase flingers and podium pounders already scratching for votes for the year 2000 -- and to pay good cash money for the privilege?

Clinton II is a bore, yes. An ethical sinkhole. Even some folks who wanted him last November are sick to death of him now; imagine what the folks who didn't want him are thinking. But get a life!

The "Midwest Republican Leadership Conference" -- that's what this one was called. They also call them "cattle shows," these early chances to see the party's best and brightest prospects on the hoof. It's an insult to cattle; cows have more sense than to waste their time and their dollars on this kind of thing. Then again, cows don't sit around counting the days until the moo-ving vans arrive to cart Bill Clinton's possessions out of the White House.

Hundreds of days, the calendar says. Hundreds and hundreds of days. No matter. These folks -- the speechifiers, and the thousand-odd desperate souls streaming in from 13(!) states to be speechified at -- were taking no chances. No matter that the current presidential term is not quite eight months old. They want to be ready for the next one.

And who was the readiest of them all? That's what the newspaper and TV stories kept trying to figure out (when the far more appropriate question was, "Who cares?")

Was it one of last year's failures? Steve Forbes? Lamar Alexander? Alan Keyes? Amazing but true -- it was only last year that this bunch of wannabes was trying to scramble past Bob Dole for the Republican nomination. They were in Indianapolis last weekend, all three of them, looking for another crack at it.

Was it Jack Kemp, who actually made it onto the Republican ticket last time around, where he distinguished himself mostly by his total lack of distinction? Kemp was there, too. So was Newt Gingrich, who had to be searching for either a political resurrection of biblical proportions, or a face-saving way to get his butt out of Congress before his closest, dearest friends toss him out.

It was none of the above, the stories said. The early buzz -- the ridiculously early buzz -- was buzzing around three guys who were pretty much out of the limelight in '96. Fred Thompson has the fresh face, he's chairing the year's hottest congressional hearing, and he knows how to read his lines; he did himself some good in Indianapolis, the stories said. George W. Bush has the family name, the other fresh face, and the Texas base. His delivery was wooden, some of the faithful fretted, but hey -- in three years, they can teach a monkey to give a decent speech.

Which brings us to Dan Quayle, who gave a better-than-decent speech, everyone said. A vigorous speech delivered "without notes," the stories all pointed out -- and everyone understood what an achievement that was.

"I was real inspired by Dan Quayle," said a flight attendant from Ohio. "He's come a long way."

And he didn't even get lost in the airport.

Three years of this? Forget it -- I'll shoot myself.

8/26/97