Sleep is nature's best defense against Al Gore during debates

SOMEONE ASKED ME the other day what I was going to write about now that the New Hampshire Senate no longer has Brock in the dock. No problem. We live in interesting times. The world is what military people like to call a target-rich environment.

There are, after all, political races going on at both the state and national level. In the world, we shall have wars and rumors of war, from now until Armageddon. In politics, we have debates and debates about debates. Debates between and among candidates will go on for another two to three weeks, with the final televised debate among New Hampshire's gubernatorial contenders set for Oct. 31.

By the time you read this, some of you will have seen last night's third and final debate between Presidential candidates Al Gore and George W. Bush, moderated by Jim Lehrer of PBS. Perhaps some of you are so lacking in civic virtue that you failed to suffer through it. These things tend to be rather predictable, so even though I am writing this before the event, I believe I can tell you what happened. I imagine it went something like this:

Bush said he believes in God and the Ten Commandments. Gore said he agrees with the governor on that. In fact, Jim, I accompanied Moses on that trip to Mount Sinai, where I took the initiative in creating the Ten Commandments. And it's personally gratifying to me that it has been one of the more notable achievements of our Reinventing Morality program and I'm quite pleased about that.

But if I may return for just a moment to one other point the governor made, I would just like to point out again that nearly half of all the money in Gov. Bush's proposed tax cut will go to the wealthiest 1 percent (Here Gore holds up his right index finger to show us how much one is), 1 percent of all Americans. Now that just doesn't make a whole a lot of economic sense and it's just not fair to millions of middle-class taxpayers to give that much money to the wealthiest 1 (index finger back up) percent of all Americans. Now, what Joe Lieberman and I propose to do is . . .

That's when I fell asleep again, as did many of you. Don't feel bad. Don't think you're not a good American if you slip into slumber during a Vice Presidential soliloquy. It's only natural. Sleep is nature's defense against Gore.

In fact, Democrats should encourage people to fall asleep when Gore is speaking, on the theory that the longer people stay awake and listen to him, the less likely they will be to vote for him. Snore for Gore should be the Democrats' campaign slogan.

Bush, of course, is himself less than scintillating as a public speaker, though he did manage to get through the first two debates without murdering the rules of grammar. (Simple assaults on the rules of grammar are neither high crimes nor misdemeanors for Presidential candidates.) The gentlemen differ more in style than in substance. If Bush and Gore were to trade talking points, you'd have to listen closely to notice the difference. They agreed so much during last week's 90-minute chat that an uninformed but reasonably intelligent viewer might have mistaken them for running mates.

Some have suggested the debates might be more informative, and surely more entertaining if Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan and Green Party nominee Ralph Nader had been included. One might also make the case for Harry Browne of the Libertarian Party and Howard Phillips, the candidate of the Constitution Party. Somehow though, it just wouldn't do to let voters know they have more than two choices for President. A free market in automobiles, refrigerators or computer chips is fine. But a free market in politics is too messy, too unwieldy, too unsettling to the protected duopoly known as the two-party system.

In New Hampshire, the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce apparently believes it is better qualified than the election laws of New Hampshire to determine what your choices are in the upcoming election. The Chamber held what it advertised as a debate by the gubernatorial candidates, though only two of four candidates on the ballot -- Republican Gordon Humphrey and Democrat Jeanne Shaheen -- were invited. State Sen. Mary Brown, running as an independent, and Libertarian candidate John Babiarz were excluded. When Brown showed up and requested permission to make a two-minute speech, she was escorted out the door.