Home-fried Franken. By Al Franken. George, Dec99/Jan00, Vol. 4 Issue 12, p63, 3p, 3c

I am a Democrat. I am also, thank God, a highly paid after-dinner speaker. Normally, I speak to corporate groups, which almost always lean Republican. But I've found a surefire line to win them over. I tell them that what I do for a living is make fun of Republicans but that "I've discovered that Democrats can't afford me."

They love that. It makes them feel rich, which they usually are. Then I say, "So basically what I do is make fun of you, you laugh, and then you pay me. Then I speak free to Democrats. Everyone's happy." And it's true. Everyone's happy.

Well, not everyone. When I say I speak free to Democrats, let me make it clear that I get a lot of requests from Democrats and turn almost all of them down. As I say, I speak to them for free. And who wants to do that?

But this was big. Al Gore and Bill Bradley would be appearing together on the same platform for the first time during this campaign cycle. The Iowa Democrats' Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner was going to be electric! Anyway, as electric as Gore and Bradley get. Plus, I knew I could get a George article out of it. At least someone would be paying me for my time.

Three thousand Democrats crowded into the Polk County Convention Complex for chicken stuffed with pesto (mistaken for chicken cordon bleu by the Des Moines Register), the biggest turnout ever for an Iowa J-J Dinner. It wasn't the pesto or Gore or Bradley or even me. For the first time in 30 years, Iowa has a Democratic governor, and this was cause for celebration.

Governor Tom Vilsack hasn't endorsed either Gore or Bradley. He told me his job is to build the Iowa Democratic party, so he's staying scrupulously neutral. I saw staying neutral as part of my job, too, though I scared the hell out of the apparatchik who had arranged for me to speak. I told her, "I'm a big Bradley supporter, so in my remarks, I'm going to tear Gore a new asshole."

The fact is, I go back and forth. I believe Gore is ready to be president. And I'm not the only one. If you think about it, the whole impeachment process was a tremendous vote of confidence from our Republican friends in Congress.

But then there's Clinton Fatigue (evidently, people are tired of the longest peacetime economic expansion in history) and the problem the vice president seems to have connecting with people. And Bradley is a hero to a lot of Americans. If George W. calls himself a compassionate conservative, Bradley calls himself an intellectual jock.

Would Bradley have a better chance to beat Bush? True, he has less baggage and runs stronger with Independents. But let's say George W. keeps mixing up Slovenia and Slovakia. Maybe Americans will come around to a guy who's been there for a few international crises and actually knows the names of the countries.

So it wasn't hard to be neutral.

That didn't stop me from trying to give each guy the impression that I'm on his side. When I saw Gore earlier that day at a media-op knocking on doors in suburban Des Moines, I made a point of telling him that my wife had been to his latest fundraiser in New York, which meant his campaign was in possession of some Franken money. He smiled and said, "Al, why don't you moderate the debates between me and Bradley?"

Gore has been challenging Bradley to debate ever since he realized Bradley is a serious threat, something I figured out during my last trip to Iowa, in August. I saw Bradley at a small luncheon event at a motel in Little Amana and told him, in a very suck-uppy way, that I could feel the momentum was shifting toward him. Then I joked with him in that way that gives a guy credit for having a sense of humor. "Isn't it true that if you're an all-American athlete, that you don't really have to be that bright to win a Rhodes scholarship?"

He smiled and told me that when the Rhodes was started, the criteria were two parts academic, two parts athleticism, two parts leadership, and two parts something else, I can't remember.

Later that night, I was telling this to a bunch of journalists over dinner, and someone said, "What was Clinton's sport?" No one bothered. There are some punch lines that can be left unsaid. But then someone else asked, "How about Robert Reich? What was his sport?" Roger Simon from U.S. News answered without missing a beat, "Hide-and-seek."

So, anyway, I was neutral. Besides, my job was to trash Republicans. And the morons in the Reform party. Which wouldn't be hard. Two days before, Donald Trump cited a National Enquirer poll that had him leading the entire field, Democrats and Republicans included. What Trump doesn't realize is that any poll is just a snapshot. The very next day, Elvis moved into first, followed by Lizard Boy, the man with the world's longest fingernails, and then Jesse Ventura.

When I arrived in Des Moines, I found out I would be speaking last at the dinner. First Bradley, then Gore, then a couple thousand state Democrat officials, then me. The idea, they said, was to hold the crowd in their seats. I like speaking last. It gives me stuff to react to. For example, until that evening, I'd never heard so many people being thanked by people who had already been thanked by other people who had also been thanked. So when it was finally my turn, I pointed out that no one had thanked either Jefferson or Jackson.

Bradley spoke first. He knew this was a Gore crowd. These were party activists, the party establishment that Bradley, to some extent, has been running against. The response was polite, the speech lofty but restrained, the delivery professorial, the candidate peering at the text through his reading half-glasses. Later that night, Bradley delivered a much more passionate speech at a rally a few blocks away. Charhe Cook of the National Journal asked a Bradley staffer why he was so much better at that rally. The staffer said, "Oh, he likes these people."

Bradley's speech challenged the Democratic party to do "big things"--to provide health care for the uninsured, to raise children out of poverty. Then he challenged Gore to "wage campaigns that honor voters."

Gore picked up on that theme to throw down the debate gauntlet. "I listened carefully to what you had to say about making this campaign a different kind of experience and lifting up our democracy. ... But you know, the best way to do that is to have regular debates on the issues. Let's have one every week. ... What about it, Bill? If the answer is yes, stand up and wave your hand." Bradley stayed on his tush.

Gore's speech was a real tub-thumper. He left the podium, working without notes. All I could think was, "Wow, he really wants this!" His theme, a not-too-subtle attack on Bradley, was that he had always been there when his party needed him. Reaganomics? Bradley voted for Reagan's budget cuts. Not Gore. Gingrich? Bradley had cut and run when he left the Senate in '96. Gore stayed and fought (though I'm not sure he had any choice--he was vice president).

Gore built to a "Stay and Fight!" crescendo, leading the crowd with a litany of What are we going to do's on protecting the environment, gun control, reproductive rights, you name it.

That's when I thought, "You know, we probably do want a guy who really wants it."

Then came the endless parade of party officials, including the current Iowa secretary of state, which I believe is considered a stepping stone to comptroller. But the plan worked: Most of the 3,000 stayed for my 15 minutes, and to tell the truth, I killed. On George W. Bush's drug past: "I agree with Bush that what he did 'as a child' is simply not relevant. If he snorted coke when he was eight, I don't care. Though shame on his parents, who I guess were busy." I did mention one Democrat: "Warren Beatty told me that if he gets the nomination, he's going to pick a running mate who can step into the Oval Office should anything happen to him. His shortlist includes Harrison Ford, Michael Douglas, and Morgan Freeman. I asked him, 'What about Martin Sheen?' And Warren said, 'Are you kidding? That's TV!'"

In Gore and Bradley, the Democratic party actually has two serious, experienced, substantive candidates whom Americans could at least picture as president. And now that Bradley has agreed to a series of debates with the vice president, Democrats will get to choose between Bradley's almost Beattyesque vision of universal health care and federally financed campaigns and Gore's somewhat less ambitious stay-the-course, build-on-success Clintonism. You know, minus the blow jobs.