Campaign 2000’s Final Days

* Forget any postelection, post-inauguration honeymoon. Like bored spouses, we’re already tuning out George W. Bush and Al Gore. As with overexposed celebrities, Bush and Gore seem wearisome, annoying. We’re fixating on their faults: Bush can’t talk; Gore can’t stop exaggerating. Given the relentless campaign coverage, they are beginning to grate on our collective nerves. And we haven’t even yet walked down the aisle.

This perpetual presidential campaign is dispiriting, as if the Christmas season began in March. Want real campaign reform? Limit the election campaign to six months, max. Other countries--Canada comes to mind--manage to do this. Why can’t we? In the meantime, where’s the mute button?

KATHERINE SHIREK

DOUGHTIE

South Pasadena

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Regardless of who wins the presidency, the members of the losing party should take note that had they nominated a stronger candidate, their opponent was very beatable.

JORDAN AUSTIN

Port Hueneme

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Re “Bush’s 1976 Arrest in Maine Is Revealed,” Nov. 3: Voters should be extremely disappointed that Bush did not consider his drunk driving conviction important enough to disclose to the American public. Bush has said he trusts the judgment of voters, but apparently not enough to practice full disclosure. To trivialize this as a youthful mistake does not cut it. This was a criminal act committed at the age of 30, an adult by any standard. The larger issue is not the criminal violation but rather the violation of trust.

WILLIAM GOLDMAN

Palos Verdes Estates

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Most people can forgive George W. for driving drunk, but his cover-up of his arrest does not speak well to his honesty or judgment. Claiming that he engaged in the cover-up to save his daughters any embarrassment only makes matters worse.

JOHN MONSEN

Tujunga

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Who cares what happened 24 years ago in Maine to George W. He admitted to drinking and stopping, we all accepted that. This is nothing more than a dirty little slap by the Gore campaign to try and slant the election.

MICHAEL L. FRIEDMAN

Torrance

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I have been a Republican for 60 years, even though I have voted Democratic many times. However, I fully intended to vote for Gore this election until I read “Gore Turns Down Offer by Clinton to Visit Critical States” (Nov. 2). I can’t imagine Gore refusing Clinton’s help, and if he is that dumb, I certainly don’t want him for a president.

STEWART LONERGAN

Helendale, Calif.

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When you are alone in the voting booth and ready to vote for Bush, remember this. He will take away your right to clean air and water, the right of women to choose, turn our national forests and parks into oil fields and run our economy into the ground, just like his companies. And floating junk bonds is not going to help him this time. It will be the American people who will pay the price for a bad legacy of a one-term president for many decades to come. If he thinks Texas is such a great state, let’s send him back there.

ROY VANDERLEELIE

Joshua Tree

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As the Democrats rush to stop the hemorrhage of crucial votes to the Nader camp, Gore has only himself to blame. By avoiding core issues (such as capital punishment and the war on drugs) in favor of free prescription drugs and other promises impossible to keep, he has abandoned the radical core of his party. In this he has not only risked his election, but contributed knowingly to the breakup of his party. This is the first political lesson of our new century: The Democrats can no longer take for granted the votes of the radical left.

WILLIAM H. DuBAY

Costa Mesa

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To listen to Gore and Joe Lieberman, the average voter would believe that once they get into office they will keep their promises concerning Social Security reform, education reform, a patients’ bill of rights, campaign finance and prescription drugs. What they don’t remind people of is that the Congress will make those determinations. Once each issue is diced and sliced by the Congress, it will be a completely different result than the one the candidate proposes. Which candidate will work the most effectively with Congress?

CAROL LINDSEY

Ventura

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The overwhelmingly negative news coverage of Gore (“Study Finds Negative Media Political Coverage--Especially for Gore,” Nov. 1) should shatter once and for all the myth of a liberal news media.

RON KOBAYASHI

Orange

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I find it absolutely incredible that Gore thinks that reducing income taxes and abolishing the estate tax is redistribution of income from the middle class to the wealthy. Since when is allowing people to keep more of their hard-earned money or leave it to their children a redistribution? What is really a redistribution is his plan to take from the productive, funnel it through a massive government bureaucracy and give what little is left to people he deems worthy. I’ll vote for Bush.

CLEO SOPP

Whittier

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I guess I’m getting old. I remember when Gore’s plan for the redistribution of the wealth would have been called communism.

STUART SCHALLER

Valley Village

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One of the major issues ignored by both presidential candidates is the continuing problem of illegal immigration. It doesn’t take a Rhodes scholar to figure out that the overcrowding of school systems and the shortage of schools themselves are a direct result of illegal immigrants’ children overcrowding and burdening the tax-supported school system. As a consequence, education itself has deteriorated to alarming levels.

Fair-minded citizens and overburdened taxpayers are no longer willing to support a system that ignores such an obvious disregard for basic law.

WILLIAM P. MOUZIS

Lake Balboa

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What a hypocrite Robert Scheer is. After weeks of excoriating supporters of Ralph Nader because they might cost Gore the presidential election, he turns around and endorses Republican Tom Campbell, who has no chance of defeating Dianne Feinstein to become a U.S. senator (Commentary, Nov. 2). Scheer’s message is clear: You should only have the courage and honesty to act on your convictions when the outcome doesn’t matter, not when it does.

MATT RICHEY

Los Angeles

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Politicians trust the people, especially at election time. Maybe people have something that politicians want at election time?

WILLIAM HSIANG

Irvine

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The “bickering in Washington” that Bush would like to end is the natural and necessary argumentation that arises from the democratic process, in which all voices should be heard. Bush would like to impose a one-party system on us so that he can pass all the laws handed him by the very likely Republican-dominated Congress. Next he’ll pack the Supreme Court, thus unbalancing the system of checks and balances that has safeguarded democracy so far. No bickering, indeed, Mr. Bush. Good citizens should be seen and not heard.

VIRGINIA MARIPOSA

Santa Barbara

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Don’t ever be ashamed to vote your conscience. As Mark Twain once wrote: “Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”

PHILIP J. HILOW

Sunland