Four More for Gore?
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 11, 2003; 8:09 AM
I've got it!
With every armchair journo-psychiatrist trying to figure out why Al Gore descended from his almost-president throne to endorse Howard Dean, I've cracked the case.
Some say he's getting back at Bill Clinton (remember all the media pscyho-babble about their troubled relationship in 2000?)
Some say he's positioning himself for '08 (if Dean loses and he inherits the Dean Wing) or '12 (if Dean wins).
Some say it's an attempt to block Hillary, or a slap at Lieberman for being too centrist, or a desperate longing for the spotlight, blah blah blah.
But here, according to my crystal ball, is what Gore really wants: to be Dean's running mate.
Think of the ads: A vice president we won't have to train!
Al Gore – He knows what it takes to be Number 2!
Tanned, rested and ready to hit the ground running!
A heartbeat from the presidency – he's been there, done that!
You scoff? Gore brings to the ticket a southerner (maybe he'll help carry Tennessee this time), a Washington insider (D-St. Albans), someone who knows how to make a convention speech. And he's already got the Alpa-male wardrobe.
All right, maybe that's a fantasy. But so is much of the mind-reading journalism being churned out about the Gore move.
Andrew Sullivan calls the Gore nod "a Very Big Deal. Above all, it reveals the real struggle within the Democratic Party. In 2000, Gore broke decisively with Clinton and the center. Some say this was pure expediency or just Shrummery. I actually think it was genuine. Gore has emerged in these last few years as a real left-wing populist. He wants to soak the corporations, enlarge the welfare state, raise taxes and stand up for minority civil rights. He's also a Bush-hater for understandable personal reasons. A man who has spoken for MoveOn is a natural Dean supporter and his endorsement, when you think about simply the issues, is an obvious one.
"What you are seeing among the Democrats right now is therefore a classic right-left split, with the Clintons representing the right (and the party establishment) and Dean emerging as a left-wing threat to their power (using the web to foment his peasants' revolt). Gore ran against Clinton last time (it's what lost him the election, in my view); and it makes perfect sense for him to join the anti-Clinton insurrection now. Hillary's positioning as a hawk might even have been a pre-emptive strike against Gore-Dean. So we have a real ideological split here, and the future of the Dems as a mainstream party is at stake...
"By endorsing Dean now, he stands to get a major job in a potential Dean administration. Secretary of State? Supreme Court Justice? Who knows what elaborate scenarios Gore has been contemplating in his own mind. And if Dean goes down in flames (which must surely be the likeliest eventuality), Gore has allied himself with the energized, leftist Democratic base, and could position himself in 2008 as the real soul of the party - unlike that centrist opportunist, Senator Clinton. In fact, the minute after a Bush re-election, the Gore-Clinton struggle for control of the party begins again in earnest. To my mind, this is somewhat delusional of Gore. No sane political party would ever give him another chance at the presidency, after he threw it away with such spectacular incompetence in 2000. But all politicians have to be a little delusional; and Gore is nothing but a politician. For Dean, this kind of endorsement helps build momentum toward inevitability."
Dick Morris sees a grudge match:
"Enter Al Gore. Robbed of the presidency (in his view), he has been sidetracked by the Clinton machine that once lifted him from the dustbin of history and made him vice president. Has anybody thought of Al Gore in the past six months? Apparently Dean has. Their common cause: independence from Hillary and Bill.
"Gore likely knows that Dean won't win. But by backing him, he begins to carve out his own identity in the post-Bill Clinton, post-moderation post-sanity Democratic era."
Tuesday's Note quotes a unnamed Democrat as saying Gore "did it for 3 reasons:
"1) Dean will probably be the nominee
"2) his campaign is as much about a movement as it is about a candidate. Its a clear break for him to reinvent himself with the future rather than being dragged down by the past.
"3) it's a [EXPLETIVE DELETED; THINK JOHN KERRY'S FAVORITE WORD] you to all concerned. This is a man who never never forgets, never forgives and has catalogued every wrong that he has ever been subjected to."
Strong feelings, perhaps?
Slate's William Saletan echoes the complaints of some of the second tier in Tuesday's New Hampshire debate:
"Who decided Dean was the strongest candidate? Not the voters: They haven't voted. Not the polls, either: They've shown Dick Gephardt, John Kerry, and Wesley Clark scoring better than Dean in hypothetical match-ups with President Bush. The person who anointed Dean the strongest candidate is the same intervening politician who complained three years ago about intervening politicians.
"'I respect the prerogative of the voters in caucuses and in the primaries, and I'm just one person,' Gore allowed in Harlem. Please. If Gore were an ordinary person, he and the national press corps wouldn't have been there. The whole point of the endorsement was, in the words of Gore's former campaign manager, to 'lock down' the nomination for Dean.
"No ordinary person would presume to tell other presidential candidates to stop criticizing Dean. But Gore did. He instructed Democrats to 'speak no ill' of anyone in their party...
"It's one thing to endorse a candidate. It's another to suggest that criticism of that candidate undermines your party -- particularly when you've got such stature, as the party's most recent presidential nominee, that no other candidate can afford to rebuke you."
I disagree. Gore's entitled to endorse anyone he wants, a routine call for civility is no big deal -- John Edwards keeps saying the same thing -- and anyone is free to slam Gore, who last time I checked holds no office.
A Boston Globe editorial praises Dean's debate performance but complains that he "also showed glimpses of potential vulnerability. Asked about his repetition of a rumor that President Bush might have been warned by the Saudis ahead of the Sept. 11 attacks, Dean said he didn't believe it himself but thought Bush's administration should be more forthcoming to the commission probing the attack. It is a legitimate point, but a person in Dean's position should air such incendiary rumors only if he thinks they are credible.
"Later, Dean took charge of the debate, telling ABC's Ted Koppel that the long discussion about Iraq from all nine Democratic candidates was important but that the election would turn on jobs, health care, and education: 'taking this country back for ordinary Americans.'
"In truth, there would have been time for a greater exploration of domestic policy if Koppel hadn't wasted half an hour asking about endorsements, polls, and horse-race issues. This early in a campaign, candidates and voters both deserve a question less insulting than, 'When are you going to pull out?'"
I was there, and campaign aides were much harsher and more expletive-filled toward Koppel than that Globe spanking.
Johnny Apple returns to the political fray in the NYT with these questions about the Gore-blessed Dean:
"Contradictions will trail Dr. Dean as he jets around the country with just six weeks left before the first big test. Is he an outsider still, or is he an insider? On tour last weekend, he sometimes sounded like both in the same day. Now he is the anointed candidate of the vice president in an administration whose policies, he has been suggesting for months, helped to turn many Dean supporters into nonvoters."
Roger Simon plays the contrarian when it comes to the view that Lieberman was stabbed in the back by his former running mate:
"Leave it to Al Gore to screw up his big day.
"He wanted to make a big splash by endorsing Howard Dean. And he did. But he made almost as big a splash by stiffing Joe Lieberman.
"Joe Lieberman as a presidential candidate has not been doing that well this year. But Joe Lieberman as a victim has been a triumph this week. There have been press conferences! TV interviews! Front page stories!
"It seems that before the endorsement story leaked, Al Gore did not call Joe Lieberman, his former running mate, to tell him that Gore was going to endorse Dean.
"Ever since, Lieberman has been going from TV network to TV network boo-hooing about this terrible snub. But he is also keeping a stiff upper lip and claiming that this awful slight has revitalized his campaign.
"But why, exactly, did Gore owe Lieberman a call?
"First - - and this very obvious point keeps getting overlooked - - Gore did not control the leaking of the story...
"Second, what does Al Gore really owe Joe Lieberman?
"Ever since the last presidential election, Lieberman has been attacking the central theme of the Gore/Lieberman 2000 campaign, which was "people vs. the powerful."...Lieberman attacks the very campaign he was part of and he still expects a sympathy call from Gore?"
Lieberman, who's been on a bunch of TV shows talking about The Slight, hasn't gotten this much attention in some time.
Oh, but Simon does add that "Gore often doesn't care about the feelings of others very much."
We seem to be edging into the obit-writing phase for John Kerry, judging by this Jill Zuckman piece in the Chicago Tribune:
"Just 46 days before primary day, polls show Kerry in a free fall, his once considerable support collapsing around him as he clings to a distant second place. Former Vice President Al Gore's endorsement of Dean this week simply added stress to an already troubled candidacy. "Kerry's puzzled supporters say they aren't sure what has happened to the man they still consider the most presidential, most knowledgeable and most experienced of the nine Democratic candidates.
"Many have suggested to Kerry and his campaign aides that he needs media training to help him shorten his answers. They say he looks unhappy on the campaign trail and needs to smile more. Some compare him to Gore, an awkward campaigner who initially stumbled badly here. And almost everyone has said he should spend more time in the Granite State meeting voters one-on-one."
Is the Democratic race over? The White House seems to think so:
"President Bush's political advisers are now all but certain that Howard Dean will be the Democratic presidential nominee," says the New York Times, "and they are planning a campaign that takes account of what they see as Dr. Dean's strengths and weaknesses, Republicans with ties to the White House said...
"For months, members of Mr. Bush's political team said that the nine-person Democratic field was too jumbled to predict the outcome of the primaries, and they cautioned that the situation was fluid. But with Dr. Dean, in their view, pulling away from his Democratic rivals by all indicators -- the polls, fund-raising and endorsements -- Republicans said he was forcing the Bush campaign to begin making decisions about how and when to engage him.
"One Republican who speaks regularly to White House officials said there was serious thought about pursuing the earliest and most aggressive of the plans under consideration: putting Mr. Bush into full campaign mode soon after he delivers the State of the Union address in late January. In that way, the Republican said, Mr. Bush could get a quick start on defining Dr. Dean as too far to the left for the country before the former Vermont governor can wrap up the primaries and begin trying to move himself toward the political center."
The Des Moines Register has an exceedingly rare interview with an important person in Howard Dean's life:
"She's the mystery spouse.
"Judy Steinberg Dean, the wife of Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, doesn't accompany him to coffees or town meetings or rallies.
"She's never been to Iowa, and doesn't catch the daily political spin on CNN - since the Deans don't have cable TV at their Vermont home.
"Instead, Judy Dean continues to lead her life much as usual in Burlington, working as a physician in a small but busy medical practice and looking after the Deans' son, Paul, a senior in high school.
"That's where she plans to stay, even as Iowa's first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses a little more than a month away mark a crucial juncture in her husband's race for the presidency.
"'I love my practice and I have a commitment to my practice - I can't just leave my patients,' Judy Dean, an internist, said in a recent interview with The Des Moines Register. It was one of the few she's given since her husband, also a physician, vaulted to the top tier of the nine-candidate field in the race for the nomination.
'That's my job, and Howard sees it that way, too," she said. "I don't plan on traveling unless I absolutely have to, just because it would really disrupt my practice, my life, my son left at home - that would be really difficult.'"
You may be seeing a wee bit more of her in the next couple of months.
The debates aren't helping anyone, declares Dick Polman in the Philadelphia Inquirer:
"There was a scene in the Woody Allen comedy Take the Money and Run in which a gaggle of prison escapees wandered the countryside for days on end, unable to escape from one another because they were joined at the ankles by a length of chain.
"A remake of that movie could star the nine Democratic presidential candidates.
"Ever since the first buds of spring, Democratic candidates have trekked in tandem to party debates and special-interest forums across the land - 25, at last count - each hoping that a quip, a sound bite, a telling anecdote, or a killer salvo fired at President Bush might seize the public's fancy and put that lucky Democrat on the fast track to power.
"But despite the attention from C-Span, CNN, ABC and MSNBC, and all the auditions with the likes of AFSCME, AARP and the NAACP, one national poll now reports that 45 percent of likely Democratic primary voters still cannot name a single candidate. It appears the Democrats would have drawn more public notice this year if they had reserved a lectern for Paris Hilton."
Or some of the crazy characters who ran for governor of California.
Think Dennis Kucinich isn't trying to make hay out of taking on Koppel at the debate? Check out this release from the congressman's campaign:
"The day after Presidential Candidate Dennis Kucinich took ABC debate moderator Ted Koppel to task for avoiding questions that would be useful to voters in favor of questions about endorsements, money, and polls, ABC pulled its fulltime 'embedded' reporter from the Kucinich campaign, a reporter who had been given no warning that such a move was coming and who had discussed at length yesterday with the Kucinich campaign staff her plans and her needs for the coming months.
"ABC has reportedly also pulled its reporters from covering the presidential campaigns of Rev. Al Sharpton and Ambassador Carol Mosley-Braun.
"This appears to be another instance of what Kucinich criticized at the debate, namely the media trying to pick candidates, rather than letting the voters do so. In a democracy, it should be voters and not pundits or TV networks who narrow the field of candidates."
That may be the first time in modern history that a presidential candidate has complained about a reporter --a junior-level one at that -- dropping off his campaign. |
