WASHINGTON - - No matter whether George W. Bush or Al Gore wins this November, America is going to get an underachiever at its helm.
Though both men want to be known as the “education” president, a review of their college grades reveals they barely got one.
We have known for several months that Bush largely partied his way through Yale - - in four years he never got an A - - but that is not the bad news. The bad news, as Jay Leno joked, is that Bush may be the smart one.
As the Washington Post revealed last week, Gore’s grades in his sophomore year at Harvard were lower than any semester Bush spent at Yale. Gore got a D, one C-minus, two C-pluses and one B-minus.
As the Post noted, this was the year Gore spent “shooting pool, watching television, eating hamburgers and occasionally smoking marijuana.”
And the vice president who now so closely identifies with the high tech revolution that he momentarily forgot that he didn’t invent it, never took a single math course in four years.
But Gore did have the potential to do better if he had only applied himself: His verbal SAT score was 625 (out of 800) compared to Bush’s 566 and Princetonian Bill Bradley’s 485. (If you’re wondering how your kid can get into Princeton with a 485 SAT score, the answer is that she better have a killer jump shot.)
“No one has ever questioned whether Al Gore has what it takes,” Gore spokesman Chris Lehane told me, “but there is a very serious question when it comes to George W. Bush as to his perspective, judgment and experience.”
Just as Bush has begun making Gore’s honesty, or lack thereof, the centerpiece of his spring offensive, Gore is going out of his way to remind people Bush might not be a mental giant.
“Does Governor Bush have the understanding of America’s problems to be president?” Gore asked recently. “Does Governor Bush have the kind of decision-making tests under his belt to be president? The experience? The sense of perspective?”
One unanswered question, however, is just how much mental prowess a president really needs. “Frankly in American politics the standard of intelligence and academic excellence is not very high,” said Ross Baker, professor of political science at Rutgers. “Deeply reflective people are not common in American politics and they are often not successful. If you were to look at the IQ’s or standardized tests scores of most successful politicians, you’d think they were lay-about high school dropouts or shade-tree mechanics.”
Which means that both Gore and Bush should count themselves lucky to fly in Air Force One rather than be changing its tires.
Recent exit polls have shown, however, that some voters are worried about whether Bush has what it takes to run the government, a feeling fueled by the media’s fascination with his every gaffe, including such howlers as “Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?” and when he recently re-located Mexico to “South America.” (It’s in North America and notably close to Texas. )
On the other hand, Bush never paid anybody $15,000 a month to tell him what color shirts to wear and he is confident that people who underestimate him often end up being bested by him.
“It doesn’t bother me, because I know it’s wrong,” Bush has said of his “Dumbya” image. “It’s just part of the game. It’s part of the media elite game. I think anybody who doesn’t think I’m smart enough to handle the job is underestimating. I hope Al Gore feels that way.”
Turns out Al Gore does. Gore was recently asked by the Associated Press if he believes Bush is “too dumb” to be president. “Gore convulsed in laughter while taking a drink of Diet Coke,” the AP reported. “He grabbed a towel to hold against his mouth then, finally swallowing, insisted the tape recorder be stopped for an off-the-record observation.”
We do not know what that observation was, but Bush might point out that he, at least, is capable of drinking a Diet Coke without carrying a towel around with him.
SIMON SAYS:
It may be the early bird that catches the worm, but it’s the second mouse that gets the cheese.
Another million dollar idea I am giving away for free: Houseplants for cars. (Car plants?)
You can learn more about politics from listening to Jay Leno and David Letterman monologues than you can get from many news shows.
Get real: If China really wants to invade Taiwan, there is nothing the United States is going to do about it except complain sharply.
No way George W. Bush is going to pick Elizabeth Dole as his running mate. He might get along with her, but he doesn’t want to get those 2 a.m. phone calls from Bob.
If anybody has a new dot.com idea, I’ve got twenty bucks I’m willing to invest. (OK, OK, so maybe I’ll make it fifty if it’s guaranteed to turn a profit some time this millennium.)
I read an article that said one cure for the lousy air on airplanes was to get a window seat where the air circulation is better. But doesn’t that mean you just get more air from the people who are sick and coughing? (Which seems to be about one-third of the people on any flight.)
How come every other time I pick up a rental car it smells like it was just used to cart a body to the morgue? If there were really truth-in-advertising laws, car companies would offer three kinds of cars: smoking, non-smoking and just-plain-stinks.
You really want to have some fun? Go to a craft show. Not the kind where they make birdhouses out of corncobs, but the American Craft Council certified shows. You will see some amazing work that will make you proud that certain traditions and skills still live on in this country.
One thing more boring than listening to vegetarians talk about what they eat: Listening to people talk about which search engine they use.
I know a Silicon Valley guy who is so rich that instead of getting glasses, he had his windshield ground to his prescription.
One of life’s many mysteries: Is it OK to wear brown shoes with a gray suit?
You can tell how far out of it you are by how many Oscar nominated movies you have never seen.
I don’t care what anybody says, lip balm is psychologically addicting.
How come Alan Greenspan has so much control over my life? Who elected this guy? He coughs and my 401(k) gets pneumonia.
Our quote of the week comes from Julia Roberts who, in explaining the elaborate padding she had to employ to get the kind of cleavage she displays in her new movie “Erin Brockovich,” said: "If you're dating someone and they think it's the real deal you have to tell them, so they don't have a heart attack when you take things off."
Colorado Gov. Bill Owens is outraged that Barbara Walters went easy on John and Patsy Ramsey and I agree: She never asked them what kind of trees they would like to be.
According to the U.S. Mint, the new gold-colored Sacagawea dollar has been circulating since January 30, but I have never seen one anywhere and I have traveled a lot this year. The coins commemorate the American Indian who guided Lewis and Clark. They aren’t really gold - - they are a manganese-brass alloy - - but they are legal tender. I’d like to see the face of the first cab driver who gets handed one of these things, however.
Advice to Madonna: If you’re boyfriends keep getting the milk through the fence, they are not going to buy the cow.
Think there’s an election going on for president? Naw. Actually, the president and vice president are the only two elected federal offices that are not decided by popular vote. They are decided by the Electoral College. (You can look it up. It’s in the Constitution. Somewhere.) Can you name two times that the man who lost the popular vote won in the Electoral College and became president? That’s right: Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876 and Benjamin Harrison in 1888. And there’s nothing to prevent that from happening again.
I don’t get it: If the Census Bureau can use a formula to count all the people it misses, why doesn’t it just use a formula to count everybody?
WASHINGTON - - The last time I saw Pat Buchanan it was in late October and he was announcing how the Republican Party was no longer worthy of him.
He was standing in a hotel ballroom in a Washington suburb and he was facing a huge battery of TV cameras and scores of reporters.
“As John F. Kennedy said, sometimes party loyalty asks too much, and today it asks too much of us,” Buchanan said, using the imperial “us.” “Today, candor compels us to admit that our vaunted two-party system is a snare and a delusion, a fraud upon the nation. Our two parties have become nothing but two wings on the same bird of prey.”
Which was pretty tough talk, I think you will agree. But what had the Republican Party done to so anger Buchanan?
Well, in a meaningless straw in Iowa a few months before - - meaningless because all it really measured was how easily people could be bribed into getting on a bus and going to the straw poll - - Buchanan got only 7 percent of the votes.
Following the straw poll, Buchanan continued to do poorly in national polls and he was looking for someone to blame.
At first, I figured he might blame himself. I figured he might call a press conference and say, “Unlike 1996, when I actually won the New Hampshire primary, this time my campaign does not seem to be catching fire. Perhaps I am flawed as a messenger. Or perhaps people don’t really understand why I wrote a book saying we might have been better off not fighting Hitler in World War II. In any case, I have nobody to blame by myself.”
But Buchanan did not say any of these things. Instead, even though it was months and months before actual Republican voters would cast votes, he decided to switch to the Reform Party.
“Candidates of ideas need not apply,” Buchanan said, “as both parties -- both parties! -- seek out the hollow men, the malleable men, willing to read from teleprompters speeches scripted by consultants and pollsters to whom the latest readout from the focus group is sacred text.”
John McCain was happy that Buchanan was leaving the party, but George Bush was not. After Buchanan’s views on Hitler were published, McCain had said there was no room for those kind of views in the Republican Party.
Not so George Bush. "I don't want Pat Buchanan to leave the party,” Bush said. “I think it's important, should I be the nominee, to unite the Republican Party. I'm going to need every vote I can get among Republicans to win the election."
Not exactly a profile in courage, but very practical.
Bush wanted Buchanan to stay in the party, where Bush could beat him, instead of going to a third party where Buchanan would draw votes away from Bush, which well might elect Al Gore in the fall.
In any case, Buchanan did bolt the Republicans for the Reform party, where he now appears unopposed for the nomination and the $13 million the taxpayers of America will give him to run his campaign.
There is one problem, however. When the Republican and Democratic nominees get together in the fall to debate - - assuming they both agree to do so - - there is no guarantee Pat Buchanan will be invited.
In fact, he probably won’t be. And that is because the Commission on Presidential Debates, which was formed by the Republican and Democratic parties to oversee the face-offs, has declared that only candidates who have gotten an average of 15 percent in five national polls will be invited.
The purpose of this is to keep the debate field from getting too crowded and to have only “serious” candidates debate.
Buchanan says this is completely unfair and he held a press conference Monday to announce he was filing a complaint with the Federal Election Commission.
In keeping with his new reduced status, the press conference took place in a tiny meeting room that had only 18 seats for reporters, but he did attract nine camera crews, which indicates there is still some interest in Buchanan or else it was a very slow news day in Washington.
“The criteria (of the debate commission) is unfair, unjust, undemocratic and un-American,” Buchanan said. “Without the debates, there is really no way the Reform Party can win the presidency and that is unjust.”
I don’t know how successful Buchanan will be with his complaint because, in reality, the Republican and Democratic candidates are not bound by the debate commission. They can debate whomever they want.
Al Gore, I would guess, would love to have Buchanan in the debates so Buchanan can get a lot more publicity and take away even more votes from Bush.
Bush, I would guess, would not want Buchanan in the debates for the same reason.
Buchanan said if he loses before the FEC, he will file a federal lawsuit and he if loses there, he will go “to the court of public opinion.”
An alternative would be for him to win over at least 15 percent of the American public with the brilliance of his ideas.
So, in other words, Buchanan better hope either his complaint or his lawsuit works.
WASHINGTON - - There are several lessons to be learned from the fierce primary campaign just over and here are seven of them:
1.KEEP FAKING SINCERITY. A good actor always keeps in character until he is several yards offstage, so that the audience never sees anything but the role he is playing. But John McCain, who allowed reporters to attach themselves to him like lamprey eels during the campaign, snapped, "Please get out of here" to poor Maria Shriver Tuesday night and the next morning warned a cameraman, "Don't put that camera in my face!" McCain even refused to take questions after his withdrawal last Thursday. What did Bill Bradley do? He not only took questions from reporters but gave them $70 silver keychains from Tiffany's. Guess which candidate is planning to run again?
2. YOU'RE ALWAYS A LITTLE NERVOUS YOUR FIRST TIME. The most poised candidate in the primary race on either side was the man who had run for president before: Al Gore. His 1988 campaign was a shambles, but the American people don't care about old reviews, just the show that is opening on Saturday night. Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush all ran once and lost before they high-kicked their way into the Oval Office. In politics, resurrection is not a miracle but a fact of life.
3. IT'S NOT THE SIZE OF THE BOMB; IT'S HOW YOU DROP IT. The lesson of this primary season is not that negative campaigning works, but that negative campaigning can work under the right conditions and when used by the right candidates. "It's like radiation treatment," says Democratic consultant David Axelrod. "Use the right amount and you get cured. Use too much and it can kill you." Gore and George W. Bush had a much easier time going negative, because they were supported by the core constituents of their party, people who were going to vote for them no matter what. McCain and Bradley were appealing to voters who did not like politics as usual and wanted their candidates to take the high road. So when Bradley and McCain got down in the mud, some of their voters got turned off. This was especially harmful to Bradley, because many voters knew very little about him. It's an old rule of politics, but a true one: Don't go negative until you've established your positives.
4. IT'S HARDER THAN IT LOOKS. Front-runners are front-runners for a reason. They have the most money, the highest name recognition, and the best organizations. It matters. Organized labor can't deliver votes anymore, but it can deliver volunteers to make phone calls. If you have enough money–and Bush had plenty–you can buy that kind of help: The Bush campaign made 2 million voter phone calls for Super Tuesday. "When you are a front-runner, the sheer size of your campaign also means you can take three or four bullets in the gut and still remain standing to the finish line," says Stuart Rothenberg, an independent analyst. "Front-runners are hard to bring down, and all the insurgents have is small-caliber guns."
5. FIND A PLAID ROCK. Put a really good chameleon or a really good politician on a plaid rock, and they will turn plaid. Call it adaptability, call it retooling, call it selling out, it doesn't matter. It works. Al Gore's desire to become president overrode his own ego and made him willing to change his entire approach to campaigning. Bill Bradley, on the other hand, wasn't even willing to stop sucking on throat lozenges while giving his speeches. Gore became warm and fuzzy–many people vote based on which candidate they like most–while Bradley remained cool, reserved, and remote. From first day to last he gave the impression, accurate or not, that he liked The People more than he liked people.
6. SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO STAY UP WAY PAST LENO. "When Gore stayed after that first debate in Hanover, New Hampshire, and answered questions for hours, that was a turning point," Gore campaign chairman Tony Coelho says. "That showed the people the commitment he was making." And Gore is still holding excruciatingly long town meetings, in which he guarantees upfront to stay until every last question is answered no matter how late that is. "He gets four to six hours' sleep at night when he can," an aide says. "But he can get by on less." Bush is going to have to ratchet up his own activity level if he is going to stay competitive. He told U.S. News, "I'm up at 6:30 every morning and go to bed at 10:30 at night, and I'm shaking thou- sands of hands and I'm speaking from my heart . . . ." But 10:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. means eight hours' sleep a night, which is even more than most reporters get.
7. IN THE FUTURE, THEY CAN KISS MY ETHANOL. Reversing a strategy invented by Jimmy Carter in 1976, who decreed that a candidate for president had to run in every primary and caucus, John McCain skipped Iowa, husbanded his forces for New Hampshire, and won. Bradley spent millions on Iowa and lost. Bradley probably had little choice, however. He had raised almost as much money as Gore and was portraying himself as a credible, mainstream alternative to him. "If it had been a three-way race, we would have skipped Iowa in a flash," a senior Bradley aide says. "We would have paid somebody else to get in. But head to head with Gore, we couldn't do it. We knew Iowa was going to be a disaster. We were bad on the issues for Iowa." In the future, many candidates, especially those in multicandidate fields, will avoid Iowa and never have to bone up on agriculture or suck up to farmers again. This will make them happy.
WASHINGTON - - I should be at work today. I should be writing profound things about Al Gore and George Bush. But I am not. I am at home, instead.
I am sick, I told my boss on the phone. A 24-hour thing. Not to worry. Back soon. Better than ever.
“It’s the dish, isn’t it,” he said. “You finally got your satellite dish installed.”
My boss can read me like a book. It’s one of the reasons I worship him.
I am watching many fine, educational, public service broadcasts, I tell him. I am learning a great deal.
“You’re watching Italian basketball, aren’t you?” my boss says.
That’s on in an hour, I say. Right now I am watching “Shakespeare in Love” and “An American Werewolf in Paris.”
“Both?” my boss says. “You’re watching both?”
I am also watching “Cocoon: The Return” and “The Conversation”, I tell him. I am switching among all of them.
“How many stations do you get?” my boss asks.
I have been waiting for someone to ask. I get 32 commercial-free, premium movie channels, I say. I get 31 sports channels. I get 37 music channels. I get 37 variety channels and 17 news/info channels. And for an extra $6 a month, Brian Lamb will come to my home and cook me lasagna.
“I’m coming over!” my boss says.
You can’t come over! I say. You’re the boss!
“I’m coming over, anyway,” my boss says. “Who cares about George Bush and Al Gore?”
Not me, I say. Did you know there are seven HBOs?
“Seven!” my boss says. “I thought there was just one!”
Seven, I say. I get all of them.
“I am out the door!” my boss yells. “I am halfway there!”
I am sure that Bill Bradley and John McCain will always remember this week as one of the worst weeks in their lives.
I will always remember this week as one of my happiest. This is the week that my satellite dish got hooked up.
It took only a few minutes. The guy came out with a compass and found southwest. (Southwest is where the satellites live. I don’t know why. But everybody in North America has to have their satellite dishes pointing southwest. If you ever get lost, just wander around until you see a satellite dish and you will know where southwest is. I am not sure that will save you, but at least you can see “Shakespeare in Love” before you wander off again.)
I have had cable for years. The picture was awful and the service worse. If a cloud formed anywhere over the Appalachian Mountains, my cable went out and
I had to call the company.
I am sure that where you live the cable company is wonderful and the service is great. That’s the way all monopolies are, right?
But where I live the cable service seems to be staffed by people in various stages of work release.
Um, my cable is out, I would say meekly into the phone.
“So?” the cable person would say.
So I was wondering if maybe somebody could come out and fix it? Not right away, I mean. Just whenever it is convenient for you.
“What makes you so special?” the cable person would ask. “You think you’re some kind of privileged character or something?”
No, not really.
“Then just put a cork in it!” the cable person would say. “Go read a book or something.”
Thank you, I would say. That is certainly good advice.
For some reason cable companies the nation over seem to have the same motto: “We’re not happy until you’re not happy.”
So a few weeks ago, I took the plunge and bought a dish even though the cable companies run commercials telling you how terrible satellite dishes are.
Having had satellite service for a few hours now, here is my candid opinion: It is wonderful. I love it. The picture and sound are so superior to cable that the comparison is not even close.
The dish and the receiver did not cost a lot of money - - there are a lot of bargains out there if you just shop around a little - - and the monthly service is cheap compared to cable, giving you much more for the dough.
The only drawback I have noticed is that there are far too many channels, which means it takes me a very long time to go through them all, which means I may never go back to work.
“Don’t worry about it,” my boss says when I open the door. “I hear telecommuting is the wave of the future. Just tell me how I get the Golf Channel and shut up.”
My boss. I love this guy.
LOS ANGELES - - Al Gore does not intend to go gently into that twilight period that comes between sewing up the nomination and the beginning of the general election campaign.
“The interim period is going to be very challenging for Gore,” one of his senior adviser says. “There is excitement on the road, enthusiasm. How do you maintain that? It’s easy to slip back. Bush will have same problem. He will have a let down, too.”
The initial fear was that Gore would want to be vice president again, but that will be over his campaign chairman Tony Coelho’s cold, dead body.
“He is going to keep moving around the country, keep holding town hall meetings, keep projecting his concerns and the fact he is fighting for the American people,” Coelho says. “He is (ital) not (unital) going back into vice president mode.”
Yet others believe there is a role for a limited, modified, veep hangout mode. “Gore has proved that he can be a candidate; he has proved that he can pander with the best of them,” a senior Gore advisor says. “Now, all the sudden, he wins, he’s the nominee and people are thinking ‘This is serious, this is a big deal’ and so there is an advantage to being a vice president and looking serious and contrasting that with how Bush is such a lightweight.”
Contrary to pre-primary predictions that George W. Bush would have an easy time staying in the center while Gore would be forced to the left by Bill Bradley, it is Gore who now finds himself almost exactly where he wants to be, while Bush scrambles madly to assure people he barely knows Bob Jones.
“That trip to Bob Jones University may force him to pick a running mate who is Catholic just to prove he is not a bigot,” a Gore advisor predicts.
The Gore camp is already war-gaming the general election and has come up with likely strategies for both sides. “Bush will say Gore is crazy, a lunatic, and a far left-winger,” a Gore advisor says. “He will make the classic mistake of trying to define and frighten people about Al Gore.”
And what will you say about Bush? I ask him.
“That he is a far right-wing lunatic,” he replies.
And the general tenor of the campaign?
“The election campaign is going to be brutal, incredibly negative, nasty, dirty, slimy, sleazy, and one of the worst in history,” the advisor says. “It will really be something else.”
At the beginning of his campaign, Bush had a line in his speech about how if he wasn’t elected president it would not be the end of the world and he would just go home and go fishing. He doesn’t use that line anymore and today he bristles when asked if he really wants the job badly enough.
Nobody has to ask Al Gore how badly he wants the job. Even when his campaign was going horribly, he seemed to vibrate with the desire, the urgency, the need to become president. And maybe that’s why he was able to reinvent himself so effectively: There was no question he would do anything necessary to win; the only question was how to find out what was necessary.
“When he switched to the open-neck shirts and all the rest, the media made fun, but that’s what people wanted,” Coelho says. “His naturalness has now come through. Ronald Reagan was the candidate you wanted to have over for a beer and barbecue. He had the capability to be put on a pedestal, but he would not let you think he was on a pedestal.
“Al has that same capability to be on a pedestal, but after Iowa and New Hampshire, people saw the cut-up Al, the fun Al, the real Al. When Al started acting like a candidate, I knew he would win. Bill Bradley performed a great service: He forced us to campaign.”
LOS ANGELES - - I had never seen Eric Hauser so angry. Eric Hauser is Bill Bradley’s press secretary and he is a pretty amiable guy.
But Hauser is also a true believer. He is the opposite of a hired gun. He isn’t working for Bill Bradley because Bradley could pay him the most money or because he thought it was the best way to become White House press secretary.
Hauser believes in Bill Bradley as a person and a cause and now he was furious at the suggestion that anyone on the Bradley staff would be advising Bradley to drop out of the presidential race before the March 7 primaries.
Hauser was standing in the lobby of the Biltmore Hotel, which resembles what an Egyptian tomb would look like if the pharaohs had had that kind of money to throw around.
“Shoddy journalism,” Hauser was saying. “It was shoddy journalism and I am going to say that at the press conference.”
Hauser was talking about a piece in the Washington Post that was going to appear the next day. (You can get the next day’s Post via their website at midnight Eastern time, which means 9 p.m. Los Angeles time.)
The piece that so upset Hauser quoted a senior aide saying that some Bradley supporters were urging Bradley to consider quitting the race.
Hauser was about to hold a press conference to say that Bradley was not considering it and that nobody on the staff would ever consider such a thing.
“This campaign is unanimous in its aggressive desire to go forward on March 7,” Hauser said at the press conference. “At the senior level we are absolutely unified. We believe we can win.”
Well, OK. That’s what true believers are for.
But what would be so ridiculous in an aide presenting the idea of dropping out to Bradley?
The aide could say this: “Senator, you are clearly the best person for the job and you have run a terrific race. But you just got creamed in Washington state after spending six days campaigning there.”
Bradley might say that March 7 would be a whole new ball game with more than a dozen states up for grabs.
“But are they really up for grabs?” the aide could say. “Currently you do not lead in the polls in a single state. New York, where you were doing so well, now looks like it is slipping away. Ditto in Massachusetts and in California you could very well get creamed again. Heck, Senator, in your home state of Missouri you are now trailing Al Gore.”
I suppose aides really don’t talk to candidates that way, but I think every now and then they should. Every now and then reality should creep into a campaign.
The fact is that Bill Bradley has not won a single primary. The fact is also that on March 7 he might lose every contest (or just win a single state like Maine) and be reduced to a national laughing stock.
True, he can still spread his message if he stays in the race. But what has his message been lately? It has been that Al Gore is a bad fellow who doesn’t tell the truth and who once was more conservative than he is now.
What’s the point of spreading that message now? Does Bradley want to weaken Gore so that George W. Bush can become president? Does he want that to be his legacy to Campaign 2000?
Sure Bradley could switch to a positive message, but who is still listening?
And even if he decides to spread a positive message, it would cost him millions and millions of dollars. The March 7 race is called a “tarmac campaign” because it is so spread out and involves such big states that a candidate just flies from stop to stop, getting off, walking to a microphone on the tarmac, doing some TV satellite interviews and taking off again.
The other way a candidate communicates is through TV commercials and buying airtime in California and New York is very expensive.
It is estimated that Bill Bradley has about $16 million left. But his nickname from his basketball days was “Dollar Bill” not just because he made a lot of dollars, but because he was very tight with a buck.
So does Dollar Bill really want to spend ten or fifteen million dollars in a cause that has no reasonable chance of making him president?
And what is so wrong with getting out now with his head held high? At least that way he might be able to run again some day.
I tried this theory out on one of his aides who was shocked and dismayed.
“You don’t quit in the fourth quarter!” the aide said. “You never quit before the game is over!”
But sports is just a metaphor for politics. It is not really politics.
Yes, we don’t want athletes to quit before the game is over. The rules do not allow it and the spectators would not enjoy it.
But the rules are different for politics. Every now and then in politics you take a long, hard look at what you can win and what you will lose and you make a decision based on logic.
I know Bradley doesn’t want to disappoint his staff and his supporters, but they are not spectators at a basketball game.
And Bill Bradley has the power to bring his campaign to an end with dignity and grace and still not be called a quitter.