ALAN KEYES was the most fiery speaker, and also the most pissed off, railing on and on about phony polls, even deriding as bogus those few polls that have showed him anywhere near being in the running (a rare bit of honesty for a politician). He accused the Internet of having "tentacles" and ranted about "tyrants" and "dictators" as though it was 1776 all over again. Instead of McCain, it was he who seemed the most prone to explosions of temper. In piss-and-vinegar isolationism he revealed himself to be ideologically close to PAT BUCHANAN, brushing off Balkan ethnic cleansing as no big deal and mostly the fault of US involvement anyway, and engaging in some surprising CANADA bashing. Keyes also played the race card as good as anyone's ever accused AL SHARPTON and JOHNNIE COCHRAN of doing, with the best one-liner of the night, when he called the media's reluctance to give him any coverage a "black out," and then quipped "continue the black out, which means keep the Black out." He even referred to "Massa" Bush instead of answering KAREN BROWN's question about prescription drugs, prompting her to reply, "ok, but how about answering my question about prescription drugs?" -- and then proceeded to not answer it again. But Keyes showed his true conservative stripes when he blamed racism on "the decline of our moral character". . . meaning, presumably, that things were so much better for African Americans back in the good ole' 40s and 50s, the hey day of JIM CROW. Keyes also led the pack in word-coining, coming up with "kleptocrat" and then "kleptocracy." 

STEVE FORBES looks just plain scary, his facial expression never varying from that weird grinning, goggle-eyed death mask. Of all the candidates he had the most hilarious verbal gaffes, saying "pot" instead of "positive" at one point, a fine suggestion as to what could have made the whole sad affair reasonably tolerable and might have been responsible for his later complaint that "the stack is decked," which drew a few delayed chuckles from the otherwise silent audience. He bested all comers in playing the 'evil Washington' card, pronouncing the word "Washington" so many times that we were reminded of that old tongue-twisting riddle, "if Washington's washer women washed Washington's wash... etc." It was close to the number of times he called himself an "outsider" ... he also called himself a "businessman and CEO," neglecting to mention "silver spoon heir." In contrast to Hatch, he soundly criticized the Microsoft verdict (managing to get out "micro manage" and "Microsoft" in the same sentence without incident), and protested that antitrust suit with reference to the rise of APPLE, forgetting the role Bill Gates played in THAT bailout. He even dragged out his tired flat tax snake oil, even though Karen Brown instructed him at one point not to talk about it, showing that his A-number-one issue is yesterday's news. One was left wondering what exactly the "heart to heart" he vowed to have with ALAN GREENSPAN before kicking him to the curb would entail ... we'd like to be a fly on THAT wall. Still, Forbes conceded the hopelessness of his situation when he argued that "spending" under George W. increased faster than under Clinton/Gore, thus unconsciously granting Bush the presidential status already accorded him by a lot of the media. 

ORRIN HATCH may have been the oldest fossil up there but he tried hard to be the most cyber-savvy, plugging his website in both its dot-com and dot-org versions, criticizing the accessibility of donor information on the Bush site, and tossing around terms like "underlying operating system" in discussing the Microsoft lawsuit. His endorsement of the recent antitrust findings provided one of the few moments of substantive difference, in this case with Forbes, whom Hatch accused of "not having looked at all of the facts." But still, as if in anticipation of his closing description of the debates as "boring," he began with a wandering answer on campaign finance reform. He was also the first to fall back on lawyer bashing, while dodging a question on whether patients should be able to sue HMOs; the question and his answer revealed the costs imposed by HMO litigation to range anywhere from thirteen cents to 300 million dollars. When BRIT HUME asked Hatch to react to Keyes' comments on the tax issue it was clear that Hatch hadn't been listening or couldn't remember what Keyes had said, which earned him considerable WIT MEMO sympathy, because WE couldn't remember either, doubtless due to our attention span having been gutted by years of TV and other pot-sitive indulgences. 

Maybe it's just us, but GARY BAUER for some reason reminds WIT MEMO of the lead role midget in GUNTER GRASS's "The Tin Drum." Bauer kept calling the GOP "the party of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan" ... how could he leave out WARREN HARDING and RICHARD NIXON? His biggest accomplishment of the night was managing to wrest the anti-abortion crown away from Keyes, but somebody should tell Bauer that Our Nation's Unborn Children don't vote. At one point, he told some yarn about a little girl down in Louisiana or someplace alleged to have said that Bauer's quest for the presidency "means he'll have to lie," thus showing that our young people are a helluva lot smarter than conservative criticism of our schools would have you believe. In making this point, he repeated that tale about GEORGE WASHINGTON saying "I cannot tell a lie," which is, in itself, a lie. He also repeated that old bugaboo about porn sites being the net's biggest growth area, which is hard to believe... how could there possibly be room for any MORE porn sites than there already are? When the debate ended, as the other candidates stood around shaking hands, Bauer hurried off camera, as though it was past his bedtime. 

JOHN McCAIN started off well, jumping on the well-anticipated question about his temper with the mandatory kidding comeback, "that question really makes me mad" or something like that, although he really blew the opportunity to fake a scary mock tantrum in the tradition of ANDY KAUFMAN ... now THAT would have been funny. He got the biggest softball of the night when asked about military readiness; if he has any sense of decorum, he's already working on his thank-you note. That friendly set-up also gave him a chance to get in his stock line about Congress spending money on "an aircraft carrier the Navy doesn't want or need" that he forgot to use in his initial response to the temper question. McCain also got in one of the best lines of the night while disagreeing with Forbes over whether to keep on Alan Greenspan: he'd not only reappoint him, but if Greenspan died, he'd do like they did in "Weekend at Bernie's," and prop him up like he's still alive. If debates are judged by the drama of their death references, then things have really declined since KITTY DUKAKIS was being raped and murdered back in 1988. He vainly challenged Hatch's cyber-supremacy, calling the Internet the greatest invention of our time, on a par with the printing press and the industrial revolution, a point which all those pornographers Bauer referenced must have heartily endorsed. McCain also brought up a HARRY TRUMAN quip about preferring one-armed economists (so they can't say, 'but on the other hand') which we loved, 'cause we'd never heard that one before. 

Of course, everyone was waiting for GEORGE W. BUSH to speak, and he came off as the most presidential and Reaganesque, meaning the most actor-like and vapid, the most scripted and platitudinal. After a strong start he was caught with his pants down when Hume challenged him, "with all respect sir, I don't think you answered the question." At that point he started to lose it, self-consciously dropping the name of Mexican president ZEDILLO, as if to make up for his disastrous flubbing of that foreign policy 'test' a few weeks back. He repeatedly called Texas the 2^nd biggest state in the US... sure it is in area, but is it in population? Is it an accomplishment to preside over tumbleweeds? Scarily, Bush seemed the most like a guy who's trying to sell you a time share over the phone; he woulda been quite at home in "Glengarry Glenn Ross." Hume's question about what he reads everyday and Bush's flat answer sounded more like a college placement interview than a presidential debate. His criticism of what he called our "if it feels good, do it" culture was about 25 years out of date. (Minutes later, in his closing, Bauer repeated that hackneyed line word for word.) While Bush made no fatal stumbles, he didn't come off as anything other than a major lightweight, either. 

After an hour, it all began to lose steam, as Hume wearily asked Hatch, "alright, Senator, why don't you take on the tax issue?" as though he sorely wished he were somewhere else (though Hume still managed a subtle jab at Bush about his Clinton-beaten dad by reminding one and all that SADDAM HUSSEIN is still in power). Even the format with its bell that forced mercifully short answers and optimistically recalled a boxing match couldn't save it. WIT MEMO somehow managed to hang on to the very end, and we were relieved and exhausted when it was thankfully over. Still, we got no comfort from someone's suggestion that we move to a "Lincoln-Douglas" format; as we recall, those things entailed a candidate getting up and speaking uninterrupted for something like an hour, and we've already told you about our substance-shortened attention spa- oh shit, what the hell were we talking about? Now, where's that Maker's Mark? 
 
 
 

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