Campaign 2000: The Oprah Primary

But as Bush knows, you can get hurt by straining to keep up with a trained comedian. When Bush appeared by satellite last spring on Late Night, Letterman lobbed a seeming softball about his saying he was "a uniter, not a divider." Bush said, inexplicably, "That means when it comes time to sew up your chest cavity, we use stitches as opposed to opening it up." The audience booed. What could he possibly have been thinking? A few days earlier, Letterman had cried while recounting his heart surgery.

America's chat culture, with its false intimacy and scripted spontaneity, often gives the candidates just one more facile disguise. If the ability to emote on Oprah is the standard for the presidency, then 90% of the country is qualified. From Oprah you can learn that the best gift Bush has ever given was a kiss to his wife (don't parse that either), that he loves his kids, and that he can sometimes deploy his mother's acerbic wit. But if you're more worried about your Social Security check than congeniality, I suggest you flip over to C-SPAN.