> Subject: NYTimes.com Article: We Love You, You're Perfect, Goodbye
>
>
> >
> >
> >
> > We Love You, You're Perfect, Goodbye
> >
> > August 10, 2002
> > By BILL KELLER
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Before it's too late, somebody Democrats listen to (which
> > probably means somebody who can produce an obscene amount
> > of money, if not the editorial writers of this paper)
> > should take Al Gore aside and tell him: Stop. Don't run.
> > You had your chance, you blew it, now get out of the way.
> > An awful lot of influential Democrats are already saying
> > this, but they seem to be saying it mostly to each other.
> > Meanwhile Mr. Gore is half-heartedly engaged in the
> > campaign foreplay of op-ed-writing, fence-mending,
> > fund-hunting and weight loss. Will nobody step in front of
> > this misbegotten bandwagon?
> >
> > Hold on a second. That's awfully presumptuous. Mr. Gore was
> > vice president during eight years of national prosperity.
> > He was partner in an administration that moved the
> > Democrats to the tenable center, advanced free trade,
> > defanged the socially divisive issue of welfare, left us
> > budget surpluses without the need for a lot of funny
> > bookkeeping, and - after some early dithering - settled on
> > a policy of responsible engagement in the world that ought
> > to have been a source of national pride. (The Clinton peace
> > plan is still the obvious template for an eventual
> > settlement in the Middle East.) On some issues, Mr. Gore
> > was the better half of the team. He was less squeamish
> > about foreign intervention, including the honorable
> > campaign against Slobodan Milosevic. He was a visionary on
> > the environment. His alarums about global warming have now
> > been confirmed by President Bush's own Environmental
> > Protection Agency - and, oh yes, by the melting of Alaska.
> >
> > Yes, but what's the point of vision if you don't have the
> > courage of it? Mr. Gore took a gilt-edged legacy and
> > frittered it away in a clumsy, focus-grouped campaign. He
> > abandoned the New Democrat center for an insincere-sounding
> > populism. He couldn't figure out how to separate Mr.
> > Clinton the romancer of voters from Mr. Clinton the
> > romancer of interns, so he ducked him altogether. He
> > soft-pedaled his views on free trade and gun control and
> > the environment for fear of offending one voter bloc or
> > another. It's true you have to win to realize your ideas,
> > but for Mr. Gore it became more about the winning than the
> > ideas. The net effect of all his calculated repositioning
> > was that voters liked him less; they decided he was an
> > opportunist, a phony. In short, he ran a bone-headed
> > campaign.
> >
> > A bone-headed campaign he WON, don't forget. He got 537,179
> > more popular votes, and only lost the Electoral College
> > thanks to a lot of well-documented funny business. The best
> > estimate of the various investigative post-mortems was that
> > an honest statewide recount would have awarded Florida to
> > Mr. Gore and denied Antonin Scalia the role of American
> > kingmaker.
> >
> > Mr. Gore never bothered to demand that statewide recount,
> > because he preferred the cynical alternative of recounting
> > only the Democratic counties. Kind of hoist by his own
> > petard, wouldn't you say? In any case, given the robust
> > state of the economy and the alarming inexperience of his
> > rival, he should have won handily. He lost his home state,
> > and Mr. Clinton's, for Pete's sake.
> >
> > Still, there are plenty of Democrats seething at the
> > injustice and yearning for a rematch. Isn't Mr. Gore
> > entitled to pursue his vindication?
> >
> > Oh, boo hoo. This isn't about Al Gore's inner peace. And it
> > isn't a grudge match. The last thing we need now is a
> > wallow in the past - which a Gore campaign is almost
> > certain to entail, dragging around as he does the whole
> > sorry afterbirth of Florida, the Clinton mischief, his own
> > self-reinventions. This is about whom we want to lead the
> > country through a perilous period. Mr. Gore disqualified
> > himself by not having the confidence of his own convictions
> > - to the point where we wondered if he had any convictions.
> > Surely two prerequisites for a president are a confident
> > sense of direction and the ability to inspire people to go
> > there.
> >
> > That campaign you describe as "populist" was actually an
> > appeal for economic prudence - sequestering Social
> > Security, focusing tax cuts on the middle class, paying
> > down the national debt - and a warning that a Bush
> > administration would be a feast of special interests. If
> > that's populist, we're all feeling a little populist now.
> > We've got an administration characterized by blind faith in
> > crony capitalism, a drunken spendthrift's version of
> > supply-side economics, and a secretive, country-club
> > executive style. The people-versus-the-powerful
> > sloganeering was grating, but on the merits wasn't Mr. Gore
> > right?
> >
> > Fair enough, though don't forget that Messrs. Clinton and
> > Gore were aided in their prudence by a tax windfall from
> > the phenomenal party-hearty economy of the 1990's. Mr. Bush
> > can be blamed for a lot, but not, on the whole, for the
> > recession and the collapse of an inflated market. Would I
> > rather have a Gore economic team managing our way out of
> > the current mess? Yes. But I don't think I can bear a
> > campaign marathon of Al Gore whining, "I told you so."
> >
> > So what's the alternative? John Kerry, the ersatz J.F.K.,
> > who fancies himself a global strategist because 30 years
> > ago he faced down a Vietcong ambush? (And, by the way, with
> > all due respect for his exploit, how utterly weird is it
> > that he then took out his handy 8-millimeter camera and
> > re-enacted his heroism on film?) Surely not Joe Lieberman,
> > Al Gore's sad-eyed second banana, who got out-debated by
> > Dick Cheney? Dick Gephardt is too partisan, too Old
> > Democrat, to win moderates and independents. And John
> > Edwards, the newbie heartthrob, is untested in a year when
> > untested will be a very, very hard sell. (Sadly for Mr.
> > Gore, the year for untested was 2000.) Howard Dean, the
> > appealing governor of Vermont, wins the Bruce Babbitt/Paul
> > Tsongas prize; he'll get the pundit vote.
> >
> > When was the last time that, two years before the election,
> > the assortment of candidates didn't make your heart sink a
> > little? You want Martin Sheen, but he's not the president,
> > he just plays one on TV. Let Mr. Gore stand down, and one
> > of the others will rise to the occasion.
> >
> > Here's an idea. Why not let them sharpen their teeth on Al
> > Gore in the primaries? As Joe Klein put it in Slate, one of
> > two good things could happen if Mr. Gore runs: either
> > "another new Gore will materialize - a looser, more
> > gracious Gore, one with the courage of his intelligence,"
> > or an alternative candidate will prevail, and go on to the
> > general election fortified by his reputation as a
> > giant-killer.
> >
> > Don't bet on it. A likelier outcome is that Al Gore wins
> > the nomination - thanks to name recognition, the
> > front-loading of the primary schedule and the knee-jerk
> > reflexes of the party machinery - without becoming a more
> > appealing candidate in the process. We can always hope, and
> > his friends say he's determined to run a more visceral,
> > true-to-himself campaign this time, but he shows little
> > sign of it yet. And as for gracious - that's not a quality
> > he seems to have in him. The Democratic Leadership Council,
> > which helped launch Mr. Gore and the centrist movement, met
> > in New York to hear from the 2004 hopefuls, and Mr. Gore
> > was too above-it-all to show up. (He was conspicuously
> > lunching nearby at the Regency with his book publisher.)
> > The fact is, a lot of the fund-raisers and foot soldiers
> > who worked their hearts out for him in 2000 don't want to
> > work for him again. They'd still fall on bayonets for Bill
> > Clinton, but Mr. Gore left them feeling disillusioned and
> > unappreciated. That's not just bad manners; it's bad
> > leadership.
> >
> >
> > In any case, another new Gore? Spare me. The reason more
> > people didn't vote for Al Gore is that they didn't like
> > him. Mr. Gore can be an engaging man in a conversation, but
> > he seems incapable of making an audience want to listen to
> > him. One big reason 50 million voters went instead for an
> > apparent lightweight they didn't entirely trust was that
> > they didn't want to have Al Gore in their living rooms for
> > four years. During the 2000 campaign, even my 3-year-old
> > daughter, channeler of the zeitgeist, went around chanting
> > the refrain: "Al Gore is a snore."
> >
> > My head says: One last chance; show us what you've really
> > got - somewhere in there is the right message. My gut says:
> > Sorry, you're just the wrong messenger. Mr. Gore, Fisk
> > University needs you.
> >
> > In my last column I erroneously derided Earl Butz for
> > proposing to count ketchup as a vegetable during a
> > downsizing of the school lunch program. As several readers
> > pointed out, that bit of nutritional tomfoolery belonged to
> > his successors in the Reagan administration. The particular
> > idiocy that got Mr. Butz drummed out of office was an
> > offensive, racist joke that he told to a reporter, as
> > unprintable now as it was then.
> >
> >
>
nytimes.com
> 295c0d2963c472ad
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