It's way

too early to be making any predictions in this year's

presidential election, but hey, fools rush in...

I'm not

actually making a prediction on the outcome. I'm

predicting the tenor of the race.

George W.

Bush has this one in the bag, but bags have been broken

out of before.

Dubya might

lose, but it won't be because Vice Prez Al Gore didn't do

his best to give it away.

I've

learned over three decades of watching the electoral

process work that the American public is pretty gullible.

Sad but true.

If you can

just come up with a catchy phrase that people can repeat

without thinking, you can do pretty well on the political

scene.

For

instance, if you get caught perjuring yourself in a court

of law and lying directly to the American people, you

just get your spin doctors to keep repeating the words

"personal life" on TV and radio talk shows, in

newspaper columns, in interviews with the media... and

pretty soon a sufficient number of Oprah-watching, wine

cooler-sipping, clueless Americans will pick up the

chant, et voila! You're off the hook.

But Al Gore

is not as good an actor as his mentor and boss, and

apparently his people aren't as good at coming up with

the right catch phrases.

Even if

they do a better job in the future, I think there is,

after all, a limit to what people will swallow. And Gore

has made the same mistake that Newt Gingrich did.

Gingrich

painted an image of himself in the media as not only a

brilliant political strategist and dedicated fiscal

conservative, but also as a moral icon. "Mr.

Clean," we used to call him when I worked in his

office back in the early `80s, and we meant it as a

compliment.

When he got

caught fooling around, it didn't make him any less

brilliant as a political strategist, or any less

dedicated as a fiscal conservative. But his earlier moral

posturing was a too-obvious contrast with his dallying,

and Mr. Clean became Mr. Hypocrite.

Al Gore has

painted an image of himself as Mr. Clean when it comes to

the environment. Those of us who value freedom fear that

he would go to any extreme, throwing thousands of people

out of work to save a single snail darter.

But he has,

to some extent, been able to use the catch phrase

"common sense," in referring to environmental

legislation, to deflect some of that fear. When he

accuses Republicans of blocking "common sense"

environmental laws, those who are surfing between

"Oprah" and MTV and happen across CNN for just

a second might hear that and think to themselves,

"Right on, Dude."

But the

word is getting out that on Gore's own family farm he is

leasing property for a zinc mine that is polluting a

river that runs through it. This pollution is in direct

violation of "common sense" environmental laws,

and Mr. Clean has pocketed a cool half million in the

process.

Add that to

the embarrassing debacle in which he denounced tobacco

and tearfully told of a family member who had cancer when

talking to an antismoking crowd, but proudly boasted of

having picked tobacco as a youngster when talking to

farmers in North Carolina, and the credibility gap

widens.

Gore keeps

getting caught talking out of both sides of his mouth,

and I don't think he is adept enough at the spin game to

make it go away.

Bush's

image is that he's probably not the sharpest knife in the

drawer, and he's got some ideas that some on the right

won't like, and some other ideas that some on the left

won't like, but on balance he's pretty middle of the road

and his policies are pretty consistent.

As long as

he doesn't do anything stupid and keeps talking in

generalities, using catch phrases like

"compassionate conservative," he should be able

to win.

Unless,

that is, Gore finds a way to shed his

wolf-in-sheep's-clothing image.

That's it,

from where I sit: Bush cautiously steering the middle of

the road, careful not to say anything that sounds rash

(wouldn't be prudent), and Gore fighting to erase the

"disingenuous extremist" label and obtain the

same bland, colorless, centrist position as Bush.

Should be

about as exciting as a race between the tortoise and the

tortoise.