"He's Back", and the War Consensus
Wag That Finger, Wag It!
New York Magazine performs a journalistic sex act on Al Gore.
Can any journalist believe this:
There is something ineffably comforting about knowing that Gore and Clinton are no longer stewing in the juices of mutual recrimination.- John Heilemann
Ineffably comforting? Really? I never thought that Democrats had such strange ideas about personal consolation. They talked all night after 9/11. I'm so glad to know. Maybe in the final episode of next season they'll get married. I love you Billycakes.
Of course we've forgotten the 96 convention speech in which the 1984 death of his sister inspired him to fight tobacco companies. He hoped we forgot his 88 presidential campaign in which he bragged about working on tobacco farms. If this man is willing to lie about pseudo political issue like tobacco... well you get it.
Somehow Gore has captured the imagination of the media and other desperate Democrats. He has an entirely unearned anti-war credibility. Democrats believe he is antiwar because he made a speech where he got angry looking and used words like 'reckless' - then endorsed Howard Dean about a week and a half before the Dean campaign imploded. ("Well I supported Nader in 2000, but now..." said the grad student to the Iowa caucus participant.) Red staters got in a big huff at the time -- feaking out because Gore fell short of endorsing the timing of the attack in Iraq even if he kinda endorsed the principle. (Why wouldn't he? It's not like opposed bombing Iraq anytime while Vice President.)
Anyway, because the panelists on Hardball have talked about the McCain vs. Hillary campign so much the political class feels like it already happened 12 years ago the idea of a Gore candidacy seems like fun. Hey maybe we can bring back Alan Keyes for the GOP primary - just like old times. There is also a Shakespearean quality to a Gore vs. Hillary primary. Would the tensions of the first term white house battles for turf come out to the surface? Would Gore exorcise Democratic politics of Clintonian triangulation and make Marco Moulitatis into his press secretary? Will Gore wrassle a bear? Will Hillary claw off her own face and hire Dick Morris? Can you believe the media is looking at Al Gore for the FUN in 2008?
But there is one thing of which we can be sure. The foreign policy of the major candidates in 2008 will run the gamut from the Weekly Standard to The New Republic. Hagel who might have given us hope for a Rockefeller Republican (can you believe conservatives and libertarians would be hoping for such?) has sealed his doom by endorsing the replacement of Americans with Mexicans and referring to the Republican party base as "the lowest common denominator"
Who else is out there? Are there any GOP governors who with secret Charles Lindbergh shrines? Highly unlikely. Can anyone doubt the resolve of the potential Democrat nominees to ask "How high?" when a Human Rights professional says jump?
How many of you would like me to quit it with the questions?
PS. Thanks to the Antiwar.com Blog for the link.
Michael Brendan Dougherty
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Source: The Comeback KidWhen Gore decamped from the capital to Nashville five years ago with his wife, Tipper, the move was seen as a kind of Nixonian exile. The Washington Establishment viewed him with a mix of scorn and pity. In the eyes of Democrats, he was the rightful heir to the White House who’d simultaneously let the prize slip through his fingers and be swiped from under his nose. The results for the country would prove calamitous—and Gore was to blame. -
Source: Al Gore: Warmonger LiteLike Bush, Gore is also throwing out the principle of deterrence:"Iraq does pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf and we should organize an international coalition to eliminate his access to weapons of mass destruction. Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to completely deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power. Moreover, no international law can prevent the United States from taking actions to protect
Reader Comments (1)
Gore is all the antiwar Democrats have to hope for, because he at least started making the right noises against the management of the war before it was trendy to do so. (Incidentally, does that make paleoconservatives the trendsetters?) The Democrats know, as we all know, that he would be glad to intervene in Sudan (perhaps he could make up some treacly anecdote about how he tried to convince Bubba to save Rwanda, and then vowed that when he was president he would interfere in a miserable African country no matter what), and they would probably love to intervene in Sudan. Gore was routinely one of the most "hawkish" (a label that it insulting to hawks, noble creatures that they are) of Democrats in the '90s. If there was a country to be invaded, Gore was the man to tell you why it had to be invaded. He does belong to the bomb-first, policy-later hawks (which is why it is rich that the Veep during Kosovo has the gall to criticise anyone's preparation for the consequences of war), but he has rarely agreed with large-scale, multi-year deployments of combat troops, based on Bubba's calculation that Americans don't want casualties. Or, to put it more accurately, Bubba doesn't want casualties eating away at his approval rating the way they have with Dobleve.