No Candidates With Human Touch

by Steve Chapman

An oppressive solemnity hangs over the campaign trail in both parties. Appearing at a state government ceremony in Des Moines last week commemorating the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., Bill Bradley acted as though he would rather undergo bypass surgery without anesthesia than pretend he was happy to be there.

When a black man approached to introduce his school-age son, the impassive Bradley made perfunctory small talk with the father and virtually ignored the youngster. Imagine Bill Clinton in that situation, and you wonder why Bradley doesn't seek some office where his people skills would not be a handicap -- say, county coroner.

Later, in an appearance before a group of kids at Drake University, he was asked why the United States has never had a black president. "Because too many people in America can't see beneath skin color," he replied, in a tone that made it clear he isn't one of those unenlightened souls.

Bradley often radiates impatience at having to wait for the American people to reach the moral standard he has set. At such moments, he brings to mind Czar Nicholas II of Russia, who when told during a political crisis that he needed to do something to regain the confidence of his people, suggested curtly that they needed to do something to regain his confidence.

Al Gore is not exactly the life of the party, either. He's famous for being ill at ease on the stump -- so much so that he used to joke about it: "How do you pick out Al Gore from a roomful of Secret Service agents? He's the stiff one."

He also has a penchant for dark brooding, exemplified by his book about the environment, "Earth in the Balance," which has dire prognoses like this: "In our frenzied destruction of the natural world and our apparent obsession with inauthentic substitutes for direct experience with real life, we are playing out a script passed on to us by our forebears." Like Bradley, Gore often sounds as if he would be much more at home leading a graduate-school seminar than chatting about hog prices in Iowa barnyards.

But at one appearance last week, the vice president had the audience cheering and roaring with a stemwinder that was passionate, funny and utterly self-assured -- all the things he usually isn't. Maybe the difference was that this time, he was speaking from the pulpit of a black Baptist church. Apparently he's more comfortable preaching a sermon than giving a speech.

He's not the only one. Over on the Republican side, Gary Bauer, a longtime pillar of the religious right, has mounted a moral crusade whose two main purposes are to put the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom and keep gays from gaining the right to marry.

Steve Forbes, a New Jersey publishing tycoon who antagonized Christian conservatives four years ago, has been laboring mightily to show that he is really one of them. Lately, his main tactic has been attacking George W. Bush on abortion, an issue on which the front-runner takes a position indistinguishable from the one taken in 1996 by ... Steve Forbes.

Bauer and Forbes are mild next to Alan Keyes, who has been delivering fire-and-brimstone jeremiads going back to 1996. In his final turn in the last Republican debate in Iowa, Keyes chose to pass up a closing statement. Instead, he led the audience and his competitors in a prayer.

George W. Bush tried to appeal to religious sentiments by citing Jesus Christ as his favorite philosopher in one debate. But his efforts to make himself sound deeply pious, like his attempts to sound conversant in foreign affairs, are unconvincing. Bush is about the only old-fashioned politician in the race -- the only one who thrives on tactile contact with flesh-and-blood voters and who seems to be drawn to his current profession partly because it's so much fun.

When he spies an infant, Bush does what a politician is supposed to do, with gusto. By contrast, an Associated Press story recounted a campaign appearance last June in which Gore "made his way down a line of greeters until he reached a woman holding a baby. Gore reached across the metal barrier. And shook the baby's hand." If this year's crop of candidates are any indication, the babies of tomorrow can attend campaign rallies without fear of being kissed.