DENNIS MYERS Against the Grain Advertisement

In their Las Vegas debate last week, Jim Gibbons told Dina Titus, "But you seem to have such a negative view of our state. You publicly compare us to a Third World country ... You say we're at the top of every bad list and the bottom of every good list and last week you chose to -- in the New York Times -- to share your negative view of Nevada and you used that opportunity to further criticize us."

I ran a search on the New York Times Web site and found no such story, but it's not as though the poor quality of life in Nevada is a surprise to the readers of the Times. That newspaper reports the same things Nevada newspapers report. "Pick almost any index of social well being," read the front page of the New York Times on May 19, 2001, "and Nevada ranks at or near the bottom of the 50 states, although it ranks near the top in personal wealth."

Nevada as a national bad example is a very old story. In its March 15, 1955, edition, Colliers magazine (then a major national magazine) ran an article titled "The Sorry State of Nevada" that described a state with the nation's third-highest income level, yet among the highest rates of crime, suicide, infant mortality and tuberculosis and the most overcrowded prisons and schools. It is a reputation that existed before Dina Titus was born.

Her criticism of that reputation, and Gibbons' attack on her criticism, raises the question of whether the problems that caused the reputation can be solved without talking about them, and whether those who do are being disloyal to the state.

Certainly plenty of voters talk about the issue; should candidates not do likewise? (It should also be noted that Titus isn't the only one getting bad publicity for Nevada outside the state. Gibbons' cocktail lounge escapade has circled the globe, including a mention in the International Herald Tribune, an English-language newspaper published in Europe, to say nothing of dozens of news outlets in other states. Apparently what happens in Vegas doesn't stay there.)

The first time I ever saw the comment about Nevada being at the top of every bad list and the bottom of every good list was in a 1999 column by Reno columnist Cory Farley, and he was quoting "as someone observed years ago..." As it happens, Farley returned to the subject last week when Nevada showed up in a ranking of state intelligence (based on things like reading levels and test scores) that placed Nevada 49th. Farley suggested that we're setting up kids to go through life saying, "Oh, I grew up in Nevada -- but it's not as bad as you've heard."

There was an exchange similar to the Titus-Gibbons debate dialogue in the 1960 Nixon-Kennedy debates. Richard Nixon said, "America's prestige abroad will be just as high as the spokesmen for America allow it to be. Now, when we have a presidential candidate, for example -- Senator Kennedy -- stating over and over again that the United States is second in space ... second in education ... second in science ... that we have the worst slums, that we have the most crowded schools; when he says that 17 million people go to bed hungry every night; when he makes statements like this, what does this do to American prestige? Well, it can only have the effect certainly of reducing it."

John Kennedy had a killer response: "I really don't need Mr. Nixon to tell me about what my responsibilities are as a citizen ... What I downgrade, Mr. Nixon, is the leadership the country is getting, not the country."

Kennedy then went on to blame the Eisenhower/Nixon administration for what he called a stagnant economy and a decline in education, engineering, and science. Titus can't easily do that, since she has been in the Nevada Senate for 18 years, though her party has been in the minority in the Senate for all but two of those years. Nevertheless, she can make some claims to having dealt with the problems of Nevada's low quality of life rankings. For instance, she cosponsored (and Governor Guinn signed), a measure creating an education program to "prevent or delay early sexual activity." Nevada has begun declining in its teen pregnancy rate.

Whatever else the Gibbons/Titus exchange may mean, it gives voters a pretty good gauge of the candidates' level of concern over the state's reputation, and that tells us a good deal about the kind of governors they would be.