The CEO of the Sofa (O'Rourke, P. J.)

  Gore’s tax plan is based on Gore’s ideas about America’s silicon-injected economy. Actually, the ideas of both candidates on America’s economy can be summed up briefly as “Hot damn! How’d that happen? Wow! Cool! Now let’s ruin everything.”

  Gore believes that wrecking America’s economy is best accomplished by paying down the national debt a little while spending the hell out of the gross national product, whereas Bush believes in spending the hell out of the gross national product while cutting taxes somewhat.

  Medicare prescription benefits are one way to cure the burn that boom times have caused in the government pants pocket. Gore has a specific and detailed Medicare Rx plan that would be horrendously expensive. Bush lacks the specifics and details but has the horrendous expense thing well in hand. And neither candidate wants to lick the frozen pump handle of means-testing. We give billions of Medicare dollars to retired people such as yourselves, and a lot of you are not standing at highway intersections with cardboard signs reading HOMELESS AND COLOSTOMY BAG IS FULL. Average household net worth for Americans over sixty-five is more than a quarter of a million dollars. You two could kick in a little something for your doctor bills. It is not like you’re saving for a jet-ski.

  And by the way, I’ve about had it with this “greatest generation” malarkey. You people have one stock market crash in 1929, and it takes you a dozen years to go get a job. Then you wait until Germany and Japan have conquered half the world before it occurs to you to get involved in World War II. After that you get surprised by a million Red Chinese in Korea. Where do you put a million Red Chinese so they’ll be a surprise? You spend the entire 1950s watching Lawrence Welk and designing tail fins. You come up with the idea for Vietnam. Thanks. And you elect Richard Nixon. The hell with you.

  Just kidding. Actually it’s the hell with me—since I’ll be the old person when the Social Security chain letter runs out of suckers. “Put your name at the bottom of the list. Mail a check for $1,200 to everyone over sixty-five. Break this chain and you’ll never be elected to national political office.”

  There is no money in the Social Security trust fund, and there never was. Money is a government IOU. Government can’t create a trust fund by saving its own IOUs any more than I could create a trust fund by writing I get a chunk of cash when I turn twenty-one on a piece of paper. Social Security is just such a piece of paper, except it says, I get a chunk of cash when I turn sixty-five, the government promises. Consult American Indians for a fuller discussion of government promises.

  Of course, what Al and George want to do to the economy is not all bad. Or else it is. This depends on your definition of bad and whether you two were running with the nose-ringers at the last WTO meeting—metaphorically speaking—or whether you were boarding up your Starbucks shop. Bush and Gore are both free-traders and both are opposed in this by organized labor, environmentalists, human rights activists, and Pat Buchanan kooks, a weird coalition of people who don’t understand economics and people who don’t understand economics at all. Gore says he’d be the better proponent of free trade because the UAW Joe—soon to be José—Six-Pack is a Democrat and all the bunny-huggers love Earth in the Balance. Bush argues that at least he isn’t a lickspittle traitor to everything he’s ever believed in, and thus a George W. administration would be better trusted by Paddy B. and the left-wing hootenannies.

  Bush and Gore also agree on what a wonderful thing technology is. And both men mean to get a clue about it soon. They do know it should be used only to do good. Bush is against pornography on the Internet. Gore is in favor of the V-chip. And Bush wants to open American borders to immigration by high-tech workers. This is great because it means more curry take-out restaurants and exciting Pakistani cabdrivers. You Democrats should like it too. You’re running low on Chinese spies at the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory.

  Gore is supposed to be tech-savvy. But there was that awful moment last March on CNN Inside Politics when Al told Wolf Blitzer, “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.” And Socks the Cat invented the mouse thing.

  The candidates are putting this technology to wonderful use, too. Just click on algore2000.com or georgewbush.com. My heart goes out to the young, underpaid, politically infatuated campaign staffer who has to type this garbage. Here’s the key to your dad’s gun cabinet, kid. Use your toe if you can’t reach the trigger with the barrel in your mouth.

  Bush and Gore are educated idiots, members of the Lucky Sperm Scholarship Society, a small privileged class of elite Americans who have shoe-size IQs and the best educations that money, power, and influence can buy. If George W. Bush and Al Gore had grown up on my block in Toledo, Ohio, they wouldn’t have gone to Yale and Harvard. They would have gone to Kent State. Easy to picture them there circa 1970—Al picking up on the hippie thing a little late, ordering his bell-bottoms from the Sears catalog, and George W. in a real National Guard unit, shooting Al.

  At algore2000.com, you get page after page of identically formatted lame brags about how Al has got all the answers—with matching titles that maybe Tipper or somebody thought would be cute:

  VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE

  FIGHTING FOR AFRICAN AMERICANS

  FIGHTING FOR THE JEWISH COMMUNITY

  FIGHTING FOR ARAB AMERICANS

  FIGHTING FOR WOMEN

  FIGHTING FOR WORKING FAMILIES

  FIGHTING FOR SMALL BUSINESSES

  FIGHTING FOR NATIVE AMERICANS

  FIGHTING FOR ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICANS

  That’s a lot of fighting, Al, for a guy who got shot at less on his Vietnam tour than he would have if he’d gone to Kent State. And what if the blacks hate the Jews and the Jews hate the Arabs and the Arabs treat the women lousy? This fighting could get out of hand.

  Web site georgewbush.com is almost as bad, although quieter. But then, George W. has things to be quiet about, such as his environmental record in Texas now that Houston has overtaken Los Angeles as the most smog-putrid city in the nation. George supports greater state-level control over environmental policies. That might prove to be a problem with certain states such as—mmm, Texas. Gore, on the other hand, has spent the past eighteen months in Redwood National Forest living in a tree named Luna. Or that’s what he told Wolf Blitzer.

  Both Gore and Bush favor the use of ethanol—just what the world is crying out for, a fuel that’s more expensive than gasoline and that, when you get done planting, harvesting, fermenting, and refining it, generates more pollution. Neither Bush nor Gore would do much about America’s excrement-oriented farm policies that give manure loads of money to giant agribusinesses while making sure Willie Nelson always has a role saving the small farmer who’s crapped out because he can’t grow any good shit to sell to Willie.

  Speaking of which, I hope you two aren’t looking for bold moves on the drug legalization front. The candidates don’t even mention it. My assistant, Max, tells me that a search for MARIJUANA yielded no results on either Bush or Gore’s web site. I wonder if, three decades ago, a search for marijuana in Bush or Gore’s bachelor pads would have yielded the same results. These guys are reputed to have done some “flying on instruments.” But Gore was shameless enough to say, in a speech last spring, “We fought for and won the biggest antidrug budget in history, every single year. Now we can see the results of that strategy.” We sure can. Heroin is cheaper than a carton of cigarettes, and you hardly ever get carded when you’re scoring smack.

  And, speaking of things that will kill you, don’t go voting Democratic just because you think Gore will give you life without parole. See “Working to Reduce Crime and Punish Criminals” at algore2000.com, and read Al’s boast about how the 1994 Crime Bill expanded the death penalty for federal law-breaking. Vice presidents, however, don’t get a chance to invoke the death penalty very often—and a good thing, considering such past VPs as Dan Quayle, Spiro Agnew, LBJ, and Richard Nixon. Meanwhile, “Lethal-Injection George” has left us with little doubt abo
ut where he stands on this issue, having turned Texas into the “Gurney Journey State.”

  And how about death penalties for people who haven’t done anything because they aren’t born yet? Republicans are still against abortion, or so their platform says. But from the way that actual Republican candidates toe-dance when they address actual abortion questions, it’s clear that Republicans have finally gotten it through their thick skulls that even Republican women want abortion to be available at least as an option under certain circumstances. These certain circumstances involve Republican men. Republican women sometimes get so desperate that they sleep with us, and then the women wake up the next morning thinking, “Ohmigod. What if I’m…?”

  You Democrats are pro-abortion but you don’t want to come right out and say, “It’s great to kill babies, especially the babies of poor un-educated teenage girls, babies that are just going to grow up to be…Democrats.” So Gore supports abortion but will make it stop. While Bush is against abortion but will let it continue.

  Watch the candidates pull the same trick on gun control. Gore is in favor of gun control, but when he was in Congress he voted for the NRA-backed 1986 Firearm Owners’ Protection Act and against both a fourteen-day waiting period for handgun purchases and a federal requirement that serial numbers be put on guns. Bush is opposed to gun control, but he wants to put more controls on guns by raising the minimum age for handgun possession from eighteen to twenty-one and aggressively enforcing the existing gun laws—that Al Gore voted against.

  On affirmative action, Bush rises to the level of Baloney King. According to georgewbush.com, the candidate “Supports ‘affirmative access’ to open the doors of opportunity.” Although for pure fatuousness, it’s hard to match Al Gore on Stronger Families: “We need policies that value real families—that let parents balance work and family, and make our schools, hospitals, and communities more friendly to families’ needs.”

  What am I supposed to say when I hear candidates talking like this? “Oh, no, Al. We need policies that value pretend families. You be Mommy and I’ll be Daddy when he comes home with a load on: ‘Where is that bitch?’ We need policies that keep parents working all night at Hooters while the kids eat dry Ramen noodles out of the Styrofoam cup, policies that make our schools, hospitals, and communities into one big Knife and Gun Club.”

  And what about gay rights? If you’re gay, Al Gore will let you get into the military. George Bush will let you get out. You choose.

  Let’s see, what campaign issues haven’t we discussed? There’s education. They’re both for it. Bush supports vouchers that would let children get away from the meatheads and troublemakers in the public school system. This may not work. Most children are meatheads and troublemakers. Gore is against vouchers. The Gore position is, “I’m living proof that your child is not too dumb to go to St. Albans. Now help me make sure you can’t afford to send him there.”

  And there’s foreign policy. Both Bush and Gore believe we should have one. That gives the edge to Bush, since it’s almost impossible to have a worse foreign policy than the Clinton/Gore one of kissing China’s butt while bombing their Belgrade embassy, kicking Russia’s butt while giving them piles of money, and sending American soldiers to stand around and scratch their butts in Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, and Kosovo. It’s almost—but not completely—impossible to have a worse foreign policy than that. George’s dad, with the help of Dick Cheney, came pretty close in Iraq. Saddam Hussein sends his thanks for ten great years of remaining in power.

  “Where are the neighbors?” asked my wife.

  Oh, they left a while ago. The missus didn’t seem to be feeling well, mumbled something about a pain in the ass.

  My wife sighed. “Well,” she said, “at least this election will be over and done with next Tuesday.”

  “What the heck are you doing?” asked my young assistant, Max.

  I’m reading Hillary Clinton’s book, the one she published in 1995, It Takes a Village. We never listen to what people we can’t stand are saying. Now that she’s going to be a senator, I want to know what she thinks.

  “Spare me.”

  It takes a village to raise a child. The village is Washington. You are the child. There, I’ve spared you—from having to read it. And I don’t recommend that you do so. Nearly everything about It Takes a Village is objectionable, from the title—an ancient African proverb that seems to have its origins in the ancient African kingdom of Hallmarkcardia—to the acknowledgments page, where Mrs. Clinton fails to acknowledge that some poor journalism professor named Barbara Feinman did most of the work. Mrs. Clinton thereby unwisely violates the first rule of literary collaboration: Blame the co-author. And let us avert our eyes from this Kim Il Sung–style dust-cover photograph showing Mrs. Clinton surrounded by joyous youth-of-many-nations.

  The writing style is that familiar modern one so often adopted by harried public figures speaking into tape recorders. The tone is Xeroxed family newsletter, the kind enclosed in a Christmas card from people you hardly know:

  One memorable night, Chelsea wanted us to go buy a coconut….We walked to our neighborhood store, brought the coconut home, and tried to open it, even pounding on it with a hammer, to no avail. Finally we went out to the parking lot of the governor’s mansion, where we took turns throwing it on the ground until it cracked. The guards could not figure out what we were up to, and we laughed for hours afterward.

  Hours? However that may be, let us understand that what we have in It Takes a Village is a Christmas card with ideas, “a reflection of my continuing meditation on children,” as Mrs. Clinton puts it. And we need only turn to the contents page to reap the benefits of her many hours spent in philosophical contemplation of puerile ontology: “Kids Don’t Come with Instructions,” “Security Takes More Than a Blanket,” “Child Care Is Not a Spectator Sport,” “Children Are Citizens Too.” Bold thoughts. Brave insights.

  “Children,” says Mrs. Clinton, “are like the tiny figures at the center of the nesting dolls for which Russian folk artists are famous. The children are cradled in the family, which is primarily responsible for their passage from infancy to adulthood. But around the family are the larger settings of paid informers, secret police, corrupt bureaucracy, and a prison gulag.”

  I added the last part for comic relief, something It Takes a Village doesn’t provide. Intentionally.

  The profound cogitations of Mrs. Clinton result in a treasure trove of useful advice on child rearing. “The village needs a town crier—and a town prodder,” she says. I shall be certain to propose the creation of this novel office at the next city council meeting. I’m sure my fellow citizens will be as pleased as I am at the notion of a public servant going from door to door at convenient hours announcing, as Mrs. Clinton does, “We can encourage girls to be active and dress them in comfortable, durable clothes that let them move freely.”

  Mrs. Clinton has swell tips on entertaining toddlers: “Often…a sock turned into a hand puppet is enough to fascinate them for hours.” There’s that “for hours” again. I suppose even the briefest period spent in the company of Mrs. Clinton might be described that way. She’s good on keeping older kiddies fit, too: “If your children need to lose weight, help them to set a reasonable goal and make a sensible plan for getting there.” And what parent would not applaud Mrs. Clinton’s suggestion “to explain to the child in advance what the shots do, perhaps by illustrating it with her favorite dolls and stuffed animals.” Plus, this is an excellent method of educating offspring about sexual abuse and, perhaps, capital punishment. Don’t call the Senate if the kid refuses to be left alone in the room with Fuzzy the Bunny.

  Mrs. Clinton also taps the expertise of—what else to call them?—experts. “The Child Care Action Campaign…advises that ‘jigsaw puzzles and crayons may be fine for preschoolers but are inappropriate for infants.’” And Ann Brown, the chairhuman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, is quoted opining that “baby showers with a safety theme are a great
way to help new and expectant mothers childproof every room in their homes.” Oh, honey, look what Mom got us—a huge bouquet of rubber bands to put around all the knobs on our kitchen cabinets!

  But It Takes a Village is so much more than just a self-help book for morons. Mrs. Clinton lets us in on her deepest personal sorrows. “Watching one parent browbeat the other over child support or property division by threatening to fight for custody or withhold visitation, I often wished I could call in King Solomon to arbitrate.” One trembles at the thought of the lawsuits the Children’s Defense Fund would bring against old Sol for endangering the welfare of a minor, bigamy, and what Mrs. Clinton calls “the misuse of religion to further political, personal, and even commercial agendas.”

  Mrs. Clinton explains, however, that church is good. “Our spiritual life as a family was spirited and constant. We talked with God, walked with God, ate, studied, and argued with God.” And won, I’ll warrant. “My father came from a long line of Methodists, while my mother, who had not been raised in any church, taught Sunday school.” Interesting lessons they must have been. I myself am a Methodist. But Mrs. Clinton apparently belongs to the synod from Alpha Centauri. “Churches,” she says, “are among the few places in the village where today’s teenagers can let down their guard and let off steam.” She says that, in her Methodist youth group, “We argued over the meaning of war to a Christian after seeing for the first time works of art like Picasso’s Guernica, and the words of poets like T. S. Eliot and e. e. cummings inspired us to debate other moral issues.” I can only wonder if any of those words were from “one times one” by cummings:

  a politician is an arse upon

  which everything has sat except a man