The most telling moment came when moderator Jim (Softball) Lehrer lobbed up a question asking the candidates to describe how they had responded to an unexpected crisis in their lives. Gore said he took a "big risk" inviting a Russian official to mediate in getting Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to accept surrender terms in the Kosovo war, then said he probably had many other moments of great crisis response in his 24 years of public service, but he couldn't think of any, so he returned to a scripted debate point. Bush said that as governor of Texas he took the incredibly bold and unprecedented step of flying into areas of his state hit by natural disasters, talking and comforting families, and calling in federal aid.

That's the best they could do. It's obvious neither has ever really dealt with a crisis. Gore has been scripted from childhood to respond to every moment by using political calculus. Bush has used the safety net of a privileged upbringing to cushion his numerous falls from grace, and now finds himself thrust unprepared onto the world stage.

While these two unremarkable men spent 90 minutes providing millions of American insomniacs with their best sleep in months, a man whose life has been selflessly devoted to civic betterment was shut out from the hall in Boston. Even though he had a ticket to be part of the audience, Ralph Nader was barred from entry by police acting at the behest of the "debate commission," a private company run by two former heads of the Democratic and Republican parties. Nine thousand protesters massed outside demanding that Nader be given a chance to debate - more people than have shown up at almost any rally held by the major party candidates.

Nader is personally responsible for saving countless thousands of lives with his work on auto and consumer and workplace safety throughout a distinguished career as the country's most effective citizen democrat. He is eminently qualified to debate and to be president, but has been denied a spot by the commission and its corporate sponsors on the excuse that polls show him at only 5 percent (not the 15 percent threshold the commission has arbitrarily set). Of course, the opinion polls include only "likely voters," which excludes the more than half the U.S. voting population, who are so disenchanted with the major parties and their candidates that they don't even vote. Nader's real level of support has not been accurately measured, and it won't be.

The two parties exclude Nader because they know that Americans might vote for Nader if they saw him on national TV raising issues the other candidates won't touch. Wrestler Jesse Ventura was at 8 percent in the polls until he got on a televised debate in Minnesota, and then he won the governorship. And compared to Nader, Ventura is mush.

Speaking of mush, Bush and Gore droned on about the minutiae of their tax proposals, their prescription drug plans for seniors (only a prominent issue because older people vote in high numbers) and other minor issues, struggling to define their differences.

Gore tried to make the point that electing him would ensure a woman's right to abortion, because he could select three or four pro-abortion judges to the Supreme Court. This is the issue Gore has used to scare potential Nader voters into voting for him, and it has worked. In fact, though, Bush didn't say he would use a pro-life stance as a litmus test for judges, and he hasn't done so in Texas, where his judicial appointments have been moderates. Asked whether he would overturn the Food and Drug Administration's ruling allowing the abortion pill RU-486, Bush said he wouldn't use the presidency to do that. Bush emphasized that he wanted to find common ground to reduce the number of abortions (a conciliatory, common-sense stance). Given every opportunity to make a rabid anti-abortion statement, he refused. But Gore trumpeted his opposition to partial birth abortions.

The threat of Roe v. Wade being overturned is a bogeyman being used to keep liberals in the Democratic camp. That's because there is little or nothing else to make progressives want to choose Gore over Bush. The candidates agree on NAFTA, GATT, the WTO and the essentials of globalization. On foreign policy, Gore is more hawkish. He wants the best and strongest military in the world, while Bush spoke out for less interventionism. Clinton/Gore launched more U.S. military adventures than any administration in American history. Gore and Bush both support billions for useless and destabilizing missile defense systems. They agree on the wonders of welfare reform, but Gore said he wants to take it to the "next level," whatever that may be. Under Clinton/Gore, the number of children living in poverty has risen, the number of children without health insurance has increased by 9 million, and untrained mothers have been taken off the welfare rolls and made to work in minimum-wage jobs while their children are shoved into child care. The two parties' position on increasing the minimum wage is a matter of a tiny difference in amount and timing. Gore talks a better line on the environment, but his actual record is very mixed. Neither candidate will do much if anything to defend the eroding rights of unionized workers, improve job health and safety, or check in any significant way the growing power of corporations.

Gore talks about taking on the big corporations and ending the use of soft money to finance campaigns - this after years of sucking on the corporate teat. Gore is talking about being a defender of working people all his life, which is a complete joke. Both parties are completely beholden to corporate financing and corporate control. They have lost any accountability to the citizenry.

Nader isn't allowed to debate because he would puncture the carefully maintained corporate-media bubble of "unprecedented prosperity" and point out how working families spend more time working and make less money than 30 years ago; how corporations are running rampant over environmental regulations; how issues of human rights and trade have been ceded to bodies like the WTO; and how American democracy has become a charade.

Americans want to hear this debate. They are in large measure sick and tired of the two major parties, unhappy about the way corporations have taken over the political process, and worried about the future of their children and the planet.

This is a defining moment in American politics. Nader is pushing the same positions he has all his life - which revolve around consumer and worker and environmental protection and the maintenance of civic life and democratic participation in political decision-making. These weren't really very radical positions when Nader began public life in the mid-1960s (when many on the left wanted the system overthrown, not reformed through regulatory improvements). But the ground has shifted so far to the right that Nader is now outside the pale of permitted political discourse.

In cities nationwide, Nader has been drawing crowds of many thousands for speeches and rallies, including a good number of college-age students. Contrast this to Bush and Gore, whose campaign appearances are all carefully controlled and scripted events. (To attend a "town meeting" style videotaping for Gore on MTV, students at University of Michigan had to audition!)

Nader is going to file a lawsuit over his exclusion from the debate. Perhaps enough pressure will mount so that he could be forced into one of the other debates. But that is not likely. What I hope is that enough Americans will see that this whole election process has become a sham - a corporate dog-and-pony show - to start to work to save our gravely imperiled democracy.

What the rest of the world can do, unfortunately, is only to sit and watch and hope that someday soon Americans will come to their senses. Perhaps last night's debate will be an impetus for that to happen. After the Two Stooges show last night, millions of Americans woke up this morning with the frightening thought that either the brainless, bumbling daddy's-boy George W. Bush or the haughty, unprincipled opportunist Al Gore will be their next president.

Michael Betzold is a Michigan-based freelance writer whose articles have appeared in many publications including The New Republic and The Witness. He is the author of four books: Appointment with Doctor Death, on Jack Kevorkian's assisted suicide campaign; Queen of Diamonds: The Tiger Stadium Story, with Ethan Casey, on baseball and stadium subsidies; End of the Line: Autoworkers and the American Dream, with Richard Feldman; and a surrealistic feminist baseball revenge fantasy novel, Casey and the Bat. See www.mbetzold.com for a complete publications list. Betzold is a locked-out former reporter for the Detroit Free Press and won an Emmy for his work on a PBS Frontline documentary on Kevorkian.

Copyright, 2000, by Michael Betzold

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