Forget The Journalists

"Forget the journalists," George W. Bush said during a heated moment in the third presidential debate Tuesday night.

Bush made the remark after one of his more preposterous claims - that Al Gore's budget would be triple the size of Mr. Clinton's - was summarily shot down.

Forget the journalists. Forget the math. Forget Bush's record in Texas. Forget his preposterous statements, his own passle of campaign trail and debate-night exaggerations, his history of being beholden to corporate special interests, and his lack of vigilance over death penalty cases. Just remember how nice he seems when he asks for your vote.

Luckily for the Texas governor, whose ideas rarely seem to be his own, and who at most times barely seems to be in the room, a lot of journalists do seem to displaying a rampant case of selective amnesia.

Not all of them, thankfully, but a good lot are playing gotcha with Gore and soft-pedaling on Bush. The spin is so heavy that things are approaching the realm of the absurd.

W., I'm sure, would love to "forget the journalists," the ones at least who point out that Texas is a death penalty factory; the ones whose stories point toward the conclusion that Bush does not take his work - or anything - seriously, except for his own personal well-being; the ones who challenge his ridiculous claim to being fluent in Spanish; the ones who challenge his record as an executive in Texas.

The ones who point out that he's against campaign finance reform; the ones who point out that he ran the nastiest campaign of all in the face of a stiff challenge from John McCain and now wants people to think he's Mr. Nice Guy. Forget about the ones who point out that most of his legislative agenda was penned by corporations, whose monetary interests often trump those of the people.

W. didn't "forget" Adam Clymer of the New York Times, calling him a "major-league asshole," and for what: pointing out that Texas has dirty air, a bad health care system, and rich fat cats who run the Statehouse?

Forget about that? W. would love it if you would.

"When I screw up," W. seems to be saying. "Just please forget about it."

Forget about my past, W. says. Forget about the allegations of drug use and generally, umm, human mistakes, not unlike President Clinton's, which now don't seem convenient in W.'s pursuit of conservative votes.

After Bush's thoroughly inept performance in the third presidential debate, in which he showed the barest command of issues, and weakly fell back on the old saw about "we need a new attitude in Washington," W.'s friends in the mass media circled the wagons once again.

Accordingly, I'm sure, W. doesn't want to forget journalists like Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal, who despite his obvious disdain for the intellectual shortcoming of the Republican candidate, is contorting himself into clearly painful defenses of Bush. Gigot is ot alone. When Bush flails through attempts to respond to Gore's well-spoken and legitimate challenges, his cheerleaders in the press corps call it "firing back," when Bush evades, they call it "sticking to a thematic strategy."

Maybe writers like Gigot think Bush, if he's elected, will read the Wall Street Journal and develop foreign policy therefrom. Given Bush's complete lack of acumen on anything that stretches beyond the water's edge - much less the Texas-Oklahoma border - this might not be such an implausible scenario.

Folks, it's getting ridiculous. We have to stop playing kindergarten "gotcha" games with Gore - at the expense of the issues - and focus on the records of these men. Let the record show that Bush's record of achievement in public office doesn't even come close to the vice president's.

While I don't necessarily like Al Gore's rudeness toward Bush, I can understand the vice president's sense of apoplexy. I feel the exact same way whenever the Texas governor's lips start moving. Who does this guy think he is?

A journalism professor of mine once said "If you know it, write it." So consider it written: Bush's plea to forgetfulness displays a basic lack of understanding, that our top executive is playing the toughest game of all, and that there are no mulligans. This guy just doesn't have the Right Stuff.