Letters.

Score on Gore

At last--a substantive story about a presidential candidate's accomplishments and visions ("The Stiff Man Has A Spine," September 199%. Thank you. I too am tired of the repeated characterizations of Vice President Al Gore as a "bore." Do we really need another charismatic but empty suit like former President Ronald Reagan?

LEE HELFRICH Annandale, Va.

Not For Our Baby

Thanks to Alexandra Start ("You've Got a Long Way to Go, Baby," October 1999) for acknowledging the pathological state of such women's magazines as Cosmopolitan, Glamour and Vogue. As parents, my wife, and I went to great lengths to make sure that our daughter learned to read at an early age. But this makes it difficult to take our daughter through a supermarket checkout stand, where cover blurbs on women's magazines scream about exotic sexual techniques and new diets, and the models on the covers are all bone-thin with impossibly large breasts.

ROBERT STACY MCCAIN Gaithersburg, Md.

Inspiration matters

I was sorry to see the item in "Who's Who" (November 1999) quoting Elizabeth Drew's swipe at Sen. Max Cleland's intelligence. I haven't dealt directly with Cleland, but I have had some occasion to observe him at meetings. An aide pushes his wheelchair up to the table or dais. Cleland then proceeds, through his own effort, using his three stumps and his one functioning arm, to somehow maneuver himself from the wheelchair into the regular chair. Then he uses a rocking and bouncing motion, a little like a man whose car is stuck in icy snow, to get the chair up close to the table.

You try not to stare, but you cannot help yourself. For a moment the mood in the room shifts. You can practically hear the bottom fall out of pretense. The topic of discussion recedes before the reality of human hardship, courage, and pain. It is sobering and somehow cleansing, a reminder of human misfortune of a kind that life on the Hill rarely provides. In a city of professional whiners and complainers, of whom the best fed and most prosperous complain the most, Cleland accomplishes something just short of miraculous. He makes people reflect on how lucky they are.

There is no shortage of intellect in the Senate, but there is not always the same measure of humility. I have been tempted more than once to walk over to Cleland and thank him both for enduring what he does and just for being there. The swipe at Cleland was unfair on its own terms. In a larger sense it was pathetic. Believe me...