To begin with, even if first names are part of our wonderful, ever-changing culture, I don’t like them for our presidents. “Well, hi there, George!” “Waddya say, Tom?” Bill Clinton started it; Bob Dole uses it uncomfortably, always referring to himself in the third person, like some disembodied other. “Bob Dole isn’t going to stand for that! Stand! Stand! Stand!”

In the second place, what’s so great about “fireworks” in our presidential debates? Issues, someone said, are boring. Dole is “ashamed of Bob Dole,” as are some pundits, for not being “harder on Bill Clinton”. There are “lots” of things to say about Bill Clinton; “pardons, trust, and things like that.” Dole publicly turned his back on Kemp, sign language for punishment, for having “muffled his opportunity” to “blast Gore.” Kemp had announced his intention to be civil, and was. That’s Kemp’s style. But an old woman clasped Dole’s hand and said, “Don’t spare Clinton” — unwittingly relinquishing the high road to him.

For 35 years, Dole was a very effective, objective leader of the Senate. Now he is an indecisive, undirected, flustered nice guy trying to be president. His sad change of alliances and character is amazing, and I’ve thought of a song for him:

“Amazing change, how sad the sound, that broke a chap like me,/ I once was found but now am lost, had sight, but now can’t see.” Mary Forsmark Birch Harbor