The true Gore parallel is not Nixon-'68, but Nixon-'62. RMN narrowly lost in 1960, but walked away (and accepted it), for reasons that would only become obvious in another race 40 years later. Thinking he had come so close on the national level, he could win the governorship of California in 1962, he ran, lost, and retired.
6 years later, the country had been so damaged by the liberal Democrats of his day, he got another opportunity. This time, it was the right time, and the right place, and Richard Nixon will forever be remembered for having turned the Cold war from a disaster into a weapon against the Soviet Union, which eventually gave Reagan the opportunity to put them down like a dog.
Yet while Nixon was president, only his bitterest enemies could recognize what he had accomplished. And they hated him exponentially more for it. They eventually got their lap dog media to destroy his administration, but they couldn't save their greatly-admired Soviet Union. Of such opportunistic times are world heros made, and Nixon was the most important world leader in the post WWII era.
Al Gore isn't made of such stuff as Richard Nixon. He is still prominent only because the left wing media hates Bush, and is thus willing to make Gore still appear important. If he gets the Democratic nomination in 2004, which is highly likely, it will only be because the rest of liberalism looked at the race, and found it a no-win proposition. So there will be Al Gore, in November 2004, watching himself and his party go down in flames in a major landslide, and mumbling semi-coherently as always, that the press "Won't have Al Gore to kick around anymore."
Unfortunately for this 3rd rate political hack, that's where the Nixon parallel ends. The world is moving away from the obsolete socialism and welfare-statism that Gore mouths with those bovine eyes staring off somewhere into space. Furthermore the American left will need not a leader that night, but a scapegoat, and Gore is Hell bound to lean into that punch. So 2004 will be the end of Al Gore, whereas 1962 turned out to be a only a new start for Richard Nixon.
It matters who's president. It matters who has courage, patriotic zeal, and character. Nixon had those qualities, Gore not even one of them. And that makes all the difference in the world... |
