Running on Empty

Clear enough. Still worried? Gush reassures: “The fundamental question is, ’Will I be a successful president when it comes to foreign policy?‘ I will be, but until I’m the president, it‘s going to be hard for me to verify that I think I’ll be more effective.”

On abortion, also to Hardball host Chris Matthews: “I‘m gonna talk about the ideal world, Chris. I’ve read -- I understand reality. If you‘re asking me as the president, would I understand reality, I do.”

Still more reassuring: “I think anybody who doesn’t think I‘m smart enough to handle the job is underestimating.”

But Gush is improving. The campaign trail seems to have gifted him with a previously absent degree of self-knowledge. On juvenile justice: “. . . getting put away for 10 years right off the bat on a first offense at 16 is pretty extreme. I don’t think that happens a lot in my state, for example. It may. I may be mistaken. Put me down as a person who will stand corrected at some point in time.”

Such soul-searching, extended to his party‘s missteps, produced: “Truthfully, our party has been tagged with being against things -- anti-immigrant for example.”

On support from Latino voters (you know, immigrants and things): “When I got sworn in as governor of Texas, I said in my inaugural speech -- I think I said it in my inaugural speech -- I’m your governor too. You may not have voted for me, but I‘m going to be your governor.” Like it or not.

More on Gush’s disturbingly wide comfort zone: “Only thing I can tell you is that every case that I‘ve reviewed, I’ve been comfortable with the innocence or guilt of the person that has been, that I‘ve looked at. And I do not believe we’ve put a guilty -- I mean an innocent person to death in the state of Texas.”

And finally, Gush clarifies: “This may sound a little West Texan to you, but I like it. When I‘m talking about -- when I’m talking about myself, and when he‘s talking about myself, all of us are talking about me.”

On the other side of the fence -- short and wafer-thin though it may be -- stands Bore, who, despite the efforts of a rotating pack of handlers, despite the colorful ties, the animated hand gestures and the big robotic smiles, still makes an unconvincing human. A little rewiring may yet prove necessary, for most of Bore’s pronouncements are so, well, boring that they do not bear repetition. He nonetheless released a tidbit last month so revealing that even The New York Times was forced to snicker. At a $1,000-a-person fund-raiser in Washington, attended largely by African immigrants, Bore praised the audience for having raised $350,000 for the Democratic National Committee: “That is a sign that this group has really entered a brand-new relationship to the national politics of our country.” Bore congratulated the crowd -- finally relevant, having appropriately bought their way in -- for at last being able “to play its proper role in helping to focus the attention of our country on issues in Nigeria or Ethiopia or Ghana or Cameroon or South Africa.” To paraphrase a slogan popularized in the streets of Seattle: “This is what plutocracy looks like!”