THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, February 19, 1996 TAG: 9602190031
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines
Lamar Alexander may seem a blond smart aleck, but he had my sympathy when a reporter in New Hampshire asked him the price of milk and a dozen eggs.
What kind of a question is that to put to a presidential candidate?
If ever I run for president, which daily, I must say, seems less likely, and some cluck quizzes me thusly, I'll retort: ``OK, YOU WIN! I HOPE YOU'RE SATISFIED. I QUIT!''
Alexander is as cool and smooth as the center seed of a cucumber in answering inquiries about his financial dealings while he was governor, but he wasn't prepared when a reporter interrogated him about groceries.
He ordered an aide to find the answers quickly.
Let me confess I buy and drink enough milk for any three consumers, but I haven't the foggiest idea what it costs. Same thing for eggs. Prices fluctuate depending on whether you buy them at a supermarket, dairy outlet, independent grocer or directly from a chicken, and whether the eggs are brown or white or double-yolked.
The only candidate who ever responded to such questions was Bill Clinton during the 1992 debate at the University of Richmond.
He paused. You could see him thinking, as if numbers were whirling in his forehead, and he came up with an answer at which the inquiring woman smiled and nodded and the audience applauded, as if he had proved he was a man of the people.
No wonder Republicans keep harping that they must find a candidate ``who can defeat Clinton.''
His big head is as full of data as a cash register stuffed with a week's receipts.
Grocery stores can be perilous for candidates. When George Bush expressed surprise at seeing the operation of an automated scanner at the checkout counter, the press hallooed as if he had goofed up. Only long after Bush had lost the election did we learn that the register was a highly technological model with which Bush had been bemused. It was the press who had been obtuse, which is not infrequent.
Consider Dan Quayle who, upon visiting a classroom, misspelled ``potato.''
Ever since being in the first grade, any inquiry thrust at me in a classroom throws me into a panic.
But Quayle's mistake scandalized reporters.
Had pollsters run a check on the man on the street, they would have found that three-quarters of the population ended potato with a misplaced ``e.''
But Quayle, in failing, gave us a lesson. Now, fully half of us can spell potato, which is more impact than most candidates leave upon the electorate.
I doubt that 8 percent could tell the price of a dozen eggs and a quart of milk. by CNB