LA story

Even at the Al and Joe show,it's still Clinton's world

by Margaret Doris

LOS ANGELES -- The plane from St Louis was still taxiing towards the gate on Saturday when a flight attendant took the mic and chirped, "We'd just like to acknowledge TWA's own congressman." It was hard to be sure from 20 rows back, but presumably TWA's own congressman had the grace to blush becomingly.

"Many thanks to our own congressman, Dick Gephardt, " she continued merrily, "and the many efforts he's made on TWA's behalf." Like helping TWA secure the only non-stop Washington, DC/Los Angeles route, perhaps?

At the baggage claim, Gephardt's wife is loading up while the congressman from TWA seems to be remarkably unencumbered. To be fair, though, perhaps he is suffering from tennis elbow. Or maybe his wife is just used to carrying all his baggage. Certainly it is hard to function with the mind drumming drone of an aide, a short frazzled woman in a dumpy pants suit, who keeps repeating, "Dick, Dick, I read your speech. You've got to make some changes. You don't mention St. Louis, people expect you to mention your hometown. You've got to make some changes."

Mrs. Gephardt grabs one last bag. The Congressman from TWA, seven seats away from being speaker of the house, leaves the aide at the carousel and makes his way to a chauffeured van, where a California Highway Patrol car waits to escort him from the airport.

The Party of the People has arrived in LA.

The Partyin' People, on the other hand, rolled in a few days earlier. While Al Gore was handshaking his way to California, Bill and Hillary Clinton were doing a shakedown to fund his library and her senate campaign. Gore staffers were grumbling that the Clintons were stealing the spotlight (read: grabbing the cash) from the presumptive Democratic nominee. There was the little brunch in Malibu, where Bill pocketed a cool $10 million. There was the $25,000-a-couple dinner, to benefit her senate campaign, at the Mandeville Canyon home of Ken Roberts. The bash was hosted by comic-book magnate Stan Lee, and hangin' loose with America's fun couple were the likes of Milton Berle, Brad Pitt, Cher, and Patrick Stewart. When Melissa Etheridge thanked the president for "allowing us to come to the table," and saying, "We will never have to go back to the closet," Clinton reportedly cried.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Gore staffers were scrambling to draft a statement assuring

Hollywood that while the Vice President doesn't like a lot of the industry's movies, he is not going to press for regulatory legislation. And while Gore feels compelled to distance himself further and further from the President, it is increasingly apparent as the Democratic convention in LA begins to unfold that everyone else only wants to get closer.

There is a clear difference between the Republicans and the Democrats, Politically

Incorrect's Bill Maher has been observing as he makes the rounds of podiums and parties this week. The Democrats, he notes, "simply sell themselves to a slightly less scary set of special interests."

Sure, the Republicans have two Texas oilmen headlining their ticket. But that hasn't stopped the American Petroleum Institute from sponsoring a reception for Democratic lawmakers. And the Interstate Natural Gas Association hosted a tribute to Lieberman at the Fenix club in West Hollywood. Texaco, AT&T, Bristol-Meyers Squibb Co., Lucent Technologies, and America Online are all big sponsors of the partying here. From delegate breakfasts to a Conga Room Party for Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, corporate money is footing the bill. The Blue Dog Democrats -- a group of nearly 30 "moderate" House Democrats -- partied it up on Santa Monica Pier courtesy of nearly a dozen Washington-based interest groups. The NRA kicked in $25,000 just to make sure the boys had a good time (maybe Maher has a high threshold for scary). And there's something, lots of things, for everyone. Unlike at the Republican convention, where gifts were pricey and mostly restricted to A-list attendees, it's hard to walk through a hotel lobby or the Convention Center without being handed a T-shirt from a car company, sports franchise, or internet start-up. Entire homeless shelters could be clothed with what reporters and delegates are stuffing into their carry-on luggage.

Money does work in mysterious ways sometimes. It's interesting to note that Arianna Huffington, the deep pockets behind the Shadow Convention with its call for campaign finance reform, was the same deep pockets behind what was then the most expensive senate race in California -- in American -- history. Her then-husband, Michael, spent almost $30 million to lose to Diane Feinstein in 1994. But if Arianna is not looking for redemption she is at least looking for respect and recognition, and with the Los Angeles Shadow Convention she has wrought a strange and marvelous thing.

The convention is being held in Patriots Hall, a short, razor wire and gang infested walk from the Staples Center. But while the Philadelphia Shadow Convention seemed a magnet for the recently deinstitutionalized as well as the justifiably marginalized, this convention has attracted an overflow delegation of reasonably competent folks who seem to know what the inside of a voting booth looks like and don't believe that it communicates with them through the fillings in their teeth.

This is also a convention of -- and it is being spoken just loudly enough -- the people who plan to take back the Democratic party. Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone and Harvard professor Cornel West, who with retiring Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, barnstormed the country for Bill Bradley. Scott Harshbarger, now president of Common Cause. Gary Hart. A resurgence of the progressivist wing of the Democratic party, plotting how to take control.

"This is the right place for me to be as a United States senator," Wellstone told the crowd, which overflowed into the lobby and down the stairs into the basement, where plates of ribs and tired Digger-style tossed salads could be purchased along with bottled water and $5 mixed drinks. "If you want real welfare reform, focus on good education, good healthcare and a good job." If what Al Gore really wanted on the ticket was a Jew, instead of a Republican, he would have picked Paul Wellstone.

This is a true fact about LA: nobody knows where anything is. One of the purple-shirted Welcome to LA volunteers, armed with a giant loose leaf notebook and a two-way radio, can be standing 10 feet from the Bonaventure Hotel and he will tell you that he's never heard of it. Cab drivers know how to find only one destination: the airport. The city-approved cabs -- and the city is distributing thousands of pamphlets warning against non-approved "bandit" cabs -- communicate with their dispatchers via computer terminals. They send in a query for directions, and the dispatcher sends back directions to LAX.

Every taxi driver in the city seems genuinely surprised to find that a barrier has been erected around the Staples Center, preventing them from driving straight past the hall. They stop at the concrete barriers and act confused, as if this is a giant maze test for rats and they can't find the kibble. About the only subject the cabbies are well versed in is public transportation, most particularly the city's rail system. Running for miles along the city's highway system, Angelinos love to point it out from the windows of their cars as they speed by. The train (presumably packed full of cab drivers) runs on the honor system; you buy your ticket from an automated fare machine, and then you are instructed to hold onto it in the unlikely event anyone ever asks for it.

This is another true fact about LA, and one nobody wants you to forget: it was here in 1960 that John F. Kennedy accepted the Democratic nomination for president. The hotly contested convention was held at the Los Angeles Sports Arena, but his acceptance speech was moved to the Los Angeles Coliseum. Campaign workers and party regulars drummed up 80,000 people to hear him accept his party's nomination.

It was a different kind of show then. Nobody's going to be able to just walk right into the building to hear Al Gore. There's a 25-block security zone around the Staples Center, and access is strictly limited to those wearing the proper holographic passes. The city obligingly ripped down all the trees around the perimeter so protesters couldn't use them as weapons. The Ambassador Hotel, where Nixon conceded and Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, is now abandoned and in ruins. Bobby's five story likeness beams down on the convention hall, part of an Apple Computer advertising gimmick. "Think Different" the folk at Apple urge. Different than what?

The Gore campaign does not get it. Like a small-town preacher, they are obsessed with Bill Clinton and his sexcapades. They obsess, they fret, they protect their flank and they totally miss that America has moved on. If it weren't for term limitation, Bill Clinton would be re-elected in November.

But the Gore people can't understand that. So, with the Latino vote playing a critical role in this fall's elections, they decide to publicly humiliate Rep. Loretta Sanchez for her planned involvement in a fund-raising party at the Playboy Mansion here. When she at first refused to back down, they crossed her name off the list of convention speakers (a dubious distinction to begin with, given that the Democrats' not ready for prime time schedule included some 250 speakers crammed into the four-day period). She moved the fundraiser, was added back as a speaker, but then decided to back out of her speech. Rhode Island Congressman and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Patrick Kennedy, his bladder as ever close to his eyeballs, called the situation "tragic." Sanchez, who defeated "B-1 Bob" Dornan, the nutty former presidential candidate four years ago, is now an object of ridicule to her Republican opponent. But Family Values Al remains pure.

Or does he? A quick search of FEC records shows Gore has accepted campaign contributions from both Hef and his daughter Christie, the current head of Playboy Enterprises. Apparently Al can talk the talk, but not hop the hop.

Forget the chance to rope in Florida. Forget the talk about proving America really is the land of tolerance and equality. There's only one reason Joe Lieberman is on the Democratic ticket: he stood on the floor of the US Senate and ripped Bill Clinton a new one.

Joe Leiberman is the Dr. Laura of the US Senate. Moralizing, preachy, and the kind of Jew Christians without a compass gravitate to. His people killed "Our Lord," but hey, didn't they also give us the Ten Commandments? And it's somehow kind of thrilling to be preached at by someone who can read them in the original Hebrew.

Like Dr. Laura, Lieberman has a failed marriage behind him -- only his had two kids (no "I Am My Kid's Dad" T-shirt for Senator L). Why did it fail? Well, as Lieberman told TIME magazine, "Some of it was related to the fact that I had become much more religiously observant." Doubtless something's been lost in the translation of the Commandments.

Like Dr. Laura, Leiberman is a bit of a potty mouth, known to tell a slight risqué joke or two. And like Dr. Laura, he uses his writing to continue to flog dead horses. In his most recent book, In Praise of Public Life (no doubt, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men imparts no irony to Joe L) he writes, "The Clinton-Lewinsky saga is the most vivid example we have of the virus of lost standards." Brave words from a man who helped delay the availability of lower cost generic drugs to consumers, supports school vouchers, opposes adding a prescription drug entitlement to Medicare, and, until he made the short list of vice presidential candidates, expressed an interest in private investment of social security funds. For five years Lieberman has chaired the Democratic Leadership Council, a privately funded group of lawmakers that helped move the center of the Democratic party until it rested just to the left of Jesse Helms.

Among those corporations funding the DLC are ARCO, Chevron, Merk, Du Pont, Microsoft, and Phillip Morris (The LA convention organizing committee churns out endless press releases proclaiming its tobacco-free status). Bill Bennett calls Lieberman "the closest thing in the Senate to an Old Testament prophet."

No discussion has been made of the money changers in the temple.

But it's still Clinton's party, and he'll talk all night if he wants to. He comes striding into the convention hall, the cameras advancing his walk in a style not so much reminiscent of his entrance to the 1992 convention, but as if he were headed into the ring at a WWF match or was taking a leisurely stroll from the green room to the guest's chair on the Tonight Show. No matter how hokey he looks, he da man, and Al Gore could arrive at the podium in the Wizard of Oz's own balloon and he'd still look like a stiff after that act.

"Are we better off than we were eight years ago?" rolls out in that throaty, scratchy voice that just time and time again has given the same answer. "You bet we are, you bet we are."

"We're not just better off, we're also a better country . . . . Now that's the purpose of prosperity." And in the same town where the seeds of the New Frontier and the Great Society were sown, where John F. Kennedy said, "We stand today on the edge of a New Frontier," Clinton concludes with a refrain repeated often during his eight years in office. "Don't stop, " he reminded the assembled delegates, "thinkin' about tomorrow."

The president of the United States puts the period on his farewell speech before the party faithful by quoting an aging rock band noted for its extremely dysfunctional interpersonal relationships. But hey, they were fun to hang with, and so was Bill -- which is why, instead of distancing himself, Al Gore should drape the president's arm around his shoulder and take every photo op in sight.

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LIVE ON THE WEB Daily convention coverage on WorcesterPhoenix.com Just was we were with the republicans two weeks ago, the WorcesterPhoenix.com is on the convention floor and hitting the streets of Los Angeles for the Democratic National Convention. Phoenix political reporter Seth Gitell, media critic Dan Kennedy, and reporter Ben Geman are filing daily from Los Angeles with the latest news about Al Gore, Joe Lieberman, and company as they prepare to take on the GOP. Follow Gitell's, Kennedy's, and Geman's daily dispatches and full reports at http://www.worcesterphoenix.com/contents/convention_democratic.html

Elsie Burkhalter, the Louisiana delegation's whip, is so damn happy she's leaning backwards over her seat in the delegation bus and chortling. "Y'all need to hear this story about George Bush," she says, her face one huge grin. "It happened right there in Florence, North Carolina, and it's a true story, and you don't know it unless you left your room late and watched it on the news." As the bus fills up with revelers from a post-session party at the Paramount Pictures back lot, Burkhalter details how Bush, the self-professed education governor, asked a group of parents, "Is your children doing better today? Is your children learning more?"

Burkhalter just loves it. "Is you good? Is you?" she asks in a great rhetorical flourish. "I loved the speeches tonight. Bill and Hillary is good!"

At the mention of Hillary, there are a few mumbles from the back of the bus. But that doesn't faze Burkhalter. She's been down this road before, back home in New Orleans. She recalls how she answered one Hillary detractor back home: "Honey, you don't know where you're husband's been and he don't know where you've been, so let it go." She pauses, and then repeats her trump card.

"Your husband wouldn't have had that liver transplant with you bein' on public assistance if it wasn't for Bill Clinton so just shut your mouth."

Are you better off today than you were eight years ago? For an awful lot of people, the answer is yes. And Gore and Lieberman aren't speaking to those for whom the answer is no. Distance from Bill Clinton means distance from the successes, the optimism, the prosperity. If Al Gore isn't offering more of the same, then what exactly is he offering? Distance from Bill Clinton could mean the election. And that, Al, is no chopped liver.

Margaret Doris is a freelance writer.