Is Al Gore the lowest form of life ever known to political man?
Okay, no more easy rhetorical questions. Judge him instead by his
enemies. Michael Kelly, for example, who will forever remains Gore
Public Enemy #1. For that blame goes not just to Gore but to Gore
mentor Martin Peretz, who unceremoniously fired Kelly from the
editorship of the New Republic in 1997 because of all the
mean things Kelly had already been saying about Al. It’s been
payback time ever since.
Monday’s Gore speech in San Francisco gave Kelly his
latest opportunity. It was like the turkey shoot U.S. forces
engaged in against the fleeing Iraqi army in 1991. In so many
words, Kelly dismissed Gore’s comments as dishonest, cheap, low,
breaktakingly hypocritical, wretched, vile and contemptible. Oh,
and a pack of lies. Gore was lucky Kelly was prevented by U.N.
mandate to express what he really felt.
But even amid the slaughter Kelly performed a useful
journalistic service — by addressing head on Gore’s opening claim
that all other commentators and reporters have taken at face value.
Namely, that “those who attacked us on Sept. 11…have thus far
gotten away with it.” No, Kelly had to remind everyone, Al Qaeda
and the Taliban have not gotten away with it. They’ve been
attacked, scattered, and routed. They are dead, in prison, or on
the run. He might have added that Osama is probably dead.
Gore’s misrepresentations were legion, but even Kelly couldn’t
highlight them all in a 750-word column. Besides, he needed to wash
much blood from his hands.
Which is just what Gore was counting on. He survives because
other commentators let him slip away, primarily by paying little if
any attention to his substance and focusing instead on his efforts
at political repositioning. So the consensus now is that Gore on
Monday moved left to recapture his party’s base for 2004 and in so
doing gave voice to ideas more cautious Democratic rivals were
afraid to utter. Yesterday we saw how his political daring
emboldened 90-pounder Tom Daschle to strike angry anti-Bush pose.
If there is concern that Gore has caused damage, it is raised
solely in a domestic context, as in whether he’s revived
perceptions of Democrats an anti-war party and thus hurt their
chances for gains this November. Whether he’s hurt U.S. foreign
policy is neither here nor there.
At least Joe Lieberman quickly suggested Gore was out of line.
And if one takes John Edwards at his word, he distanced himself
preemptively from Gore last week, when in a major Washington
Post
op-ed he began by saying “the debate over Iraq is not about
politics. It is about national security,” and ended by noting that
“Congress must make clear to Hussein that he faces a united
nation.” Compared to Gore he sounds presidential. But Edwards will
have to heard from again if he wants that impression to be
lasting.
It does tell you something about Gore that his two finalists for
veep aren’t about to follow in his tracks. In their
naïveté, they must still think that the presidency and
foreign policy require a certain amount of statesmanship. But not
our pal Al, who appeared more than happy to treat Iraq as the stuff
of domestic politics above all else. In a way no one has dared, he
dismissed Bush foreign policy since 9/11 as an opportunity
squandered. He said the administration is in thrall to the “far
right.” He said it had turned a $200 billion budget surplus into a
$100 billion deficit. He said everything about it is dirty
politics, whether it’s Dick Cheney going on Rush Limbaugh or its
“political strategy clearly described in a White House aide’s
misplaced computer disk.”
Those remarks had nothing to do with Iraq but everything do with
the Gore’s permanent campaign. This domestic component played out
in several curious ways. For a speech that claimed deep concern for
the views of our European allies, it received next to no coverage
overseas. The left-wing Guardian has nothing about on its
website, even though Gore found a way to chide Tony Blair for his
hawkishness (though without acknowledging that Blair’s strong
backing of Bush puts the lie to any talk of unilateralism). But
note Gore’s weird comment:
“We see our most loyal ally, Tony Blair, who I think’s a
fantastic leader, getting into what they describe as serious
trouble with the British electorate because of similar doubts that
have been raised.”
In his smallness Gore can only conceive of Blair acting
politically with the same spinelessness that has characterized his
career. Gore can say what he wants, but he’ll remain the last to
know what makes Blair a fantastic leader.
For one thing, steadfastness, which Gore is simply incapable of.
By now even Saddam must know that Gore’s been all over the map on
what is to be done with him. But let’s focus here on two of Gore’s
favorite moments in his speech. He boasted that he had “felt
betrayed by the first Bush administration’s hasty departure from
the battlefield even as Saddam began to renew his persecution of
the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south” — without
noting that this departure was much in keeping with U.N. mandates
Gore now claims should control U.S. policy. Recall too how he
repaid Bush Sr. for his Iraq success: by charging late in the 1992
campaign that Bush was involved in a Watergate-like coverup of his
involvement in propping up Saddam Hussein prior to the invasion of
Kuwait. He implied that if re-elected Bush would deserve
impeachment. Gore as sweetheart goes way back.
In Monday’s speech he also bragged that “back in 1991, I was one
of a handful of Democrats in the United States Senate to vote in
favor of the resolution endorsing the Persian Gulf War.” The idea
is that we should be impressed by the toughness he displayed. But
in retrospect it merely appears he made a lucky choice. Writing in
the Winter 1997 issue of Presidential Studies Quarterly,
political scientist Paul Kengor observes:
“On January 12, [1991] Gore expressed unusual ambivalence,
noting that he had alternated back and forth in recent months over
whether he felt the administration should pursue a course of
continued sanctions or military action.”
And this is how Gore explained himself on the Senate floor:
“My decision today is the product of an intense, may I say
excruciating, effort to find my way to a place as close to a sense
of the ultimate truth in this matter as I am capable of getting.
I’ve struggled to confront this issue in its bare essence — to
separate what I think is fact, or at least highly probable, from
what I think is false, or at least highly improbable — to strike a
balance and to take my stand.
“As I searched my heart on this issue over the last few days …
I found myself feeling that if I voted for the Mitchell
nonresolution I would do so hoping that it did not prevail. I found
myself feeling even late last night that since it now appears that
there is a majority in favor of the other point of view that it
would pass and will pass regardless of how I vote. I found myself
pulled once again to support the Mitchell nonresolution, speaking
only of the process I’ve gone through.
“I feel that I owe it to those who are there [in the Persian
Gulf] prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice, to give the best
judgment of my head and my heart on what this nation should now do.
I cannot reconcile myself to a point of view and a vote that says
in effect, we will let this deadline come and go and try the
sanctions perhaps until the next window, next August when military
operations would again become feasible.”
As Kengor puts it, “the statement, ironically, was a rather
cryptic and weak endorsement along the lines made at the same time
by Governor Bill Clinton.”
If this is the best Gore could do at such a defining moment,
imagine how President Gore might have come across in response to
9/11. But before he becomes everyone’s problem again, he remains
the Democrats’ problem. Anyone want to wish them luck?
