From the WSJ Opinion Archives
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Guilty Gore Goes
Gaga
"It is now clear that Al Gore is insane," writes the New York Post's
John
Podhoretz. "I don't mean that his policy ideas are insane, though many
of them are. I mean that based on his behavior, conduct, mien and tone over
the past two days, there is every reason to believe that Albert Gore Jr., desperately
needs help. I think he needs medication, and I think that if he is already on
medication, his doctors need to adjust it or change it entirely."
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times agrees. When he delivered a speech to the far-left outfit MoveOn.org yesterday, she writes, "Mr. Gore hollered so much, he made Howard Dean look like George Pataki." She says the erstwhile veep represents "the wackadoo wing of the Democratic Party."
Well, give Gore credit for helping liberals and conservatives find common ground in this era of polarization. Pretty much everyone agrees Gore is nuts. OK, we did get one e-mail in Gore's defense, from a reader whose name we'll withhold because that's the kind of compassion we practice here at Best of the Web Today:
Al Gore spoke the truth, the real truth, and American truth. The hate speech that we are exposed to on a daily basis comes from the likes of you and the rest of you lying fascist scum that contaminate this country. You are the Republican taliban.
This charming missive pretty much captures the tone and spirit of the Gore speech, though our correspondent at least understands the virtue of brevity. Gore's speech, by contrast, ran more than 6,500 words. Maybe he's hoping for Fidel Castro's job.
How did things go so terribly wrong for Al Gore? When he ran for president in 1988, he was a fresh-faced, moderate "new Democrat." He lost the nomination to the electrifying Michael Dukakis, but he was only 40 and his future looked bright. Yet he never lived up to his potential, and today he is a pitiful, though scary, old man.
An Associated Press account of yesterday's speech notes that "Gore, who served in Vietnam, predicted greater problems for America's involvement in Iraq." The AP apparently means to suggest that Gore suffers from posttraumatic stress disorder, since the Vietnam reference is otherwise a complete non sequitur. But according to WebMD, "symptoms of PTSD usually occur within three months of the traumatic event." True, "they can occur months or years later"--but three decades later?
We've got a better theory: Gore, in our view, has cracked under a crushing burden of guilt.
To explain why, it helps to remember that a desperate anger pervades Gore's entire party at the moment. That's not surprising. For the first time in half a century, the Democrats are out of the White House and have a majority in neither house of Congress. A decisive GOP victory in November would leave the Dems a minority party for a very long time.
Oh, they put on a brave face, noting excitedly every Bush swoon in the polls. They say the president is manifestly incompetent and John Kerry will beat him easily. Maybe they'll even turn out to be right. Who knows? Certainly some Republicans are spooked about Bush's re-election prospects. But the shrillness and hysteria of the Democrats' rhetoric tells us they are far from confident.
Still, the immoderation of Gore's words, combined with the fury of his tone, puts him in a class by himself, or very nearly so, even among angry Dems. And while political candidates routinely engage in hyperbole in order to stir up the party faithful, Gore isn't running for anything. Dick Gephardt stopped ranting about Bush's being a "miserable failure" when he left the presidential race. Gore has nothing to gain by sacrificing his dignity in this way.
How did the Dems come to such a pass? In large part, it's Gore's fault. The Democrats held the White House in 2000, at a time of apparent peace and prosperity. They should have won the election that year, and they surely would have had they only had a decent candidate. But instead they had Al Gore. Even he came close enough to winning that he was tempted to try to steal the election.
There's a telling line right at the beginning of Gore's speech: George W. Bush, he says, "has brought deep dishonor to our country and built a durable reputation as the most dishonest president since Richard Nixon." Here Gore is engaging in what psychologists call "projection": attributing one's own faults to others. The most dishonest president since Richard Nixon obviously is the one who was impeached for lying under oath--the president, that is, whose No. 2 was none other than Al Gore.
Gore would have become president had Bill Clinton resigned after his 1998 impeachment, or had 17 Democratic senators voted to convict him in his impeachment trial. President Gore likely would have been re-elected in 2000, since he would have had the advantage of incumbency and been free of the Clinton taint that (unaccompanied by the Clinton charm) hurt him so much in the "red" states.
Instead, party discipline held, and the Senate acquitted Clinton. This was another missed opportunity for Gore. Had he publicly broken from Clinton and called on the president to resign, other Democrats might well have followed his lead. Instead, he appeared at a White House rally immediately after the impeachment vote and described Clinton as "a man who I believe will be regarded in the history books as one of our greatest presidents."
Thus it was Al Gore, more than anyone else, who assured the election of George W. Bush as president. And if Gore actually believes all the paranoid nonsense he utters about "global warming," "an unprecedented assault on civil liberties," the "American gulag," the "catastrophe" in Iraq and so on, he let down not only his party but his country and the world, which will soon be destroyed thanks to Bush's decision to withdraw from the Kyoto treaty.
That's more guilt than anyone should be forced to endure.
The Press Corps' Porn Addiction--II
The gratuitous Abu Ghraib references keep rolling in:
- From an Associated
Press dispatch on yesterday's warning that al Qaeda may be planning to
attack America this summer: "The ominous warning returns the nation's
attention to terrorism, the issue that President Bush has highlighted as a
central theme of his re-election campaign, after intense focus on other subjects
like prisoner abuses in Iraq."
- From a review of PBS's "Colonial House"--we kid you not--in The
American Prospect, a left-wing magazine: "The endless talk of ethnic
tribes, religious divisions, Shias and Sunnis and Kurds: Forging a righteous
body politic in Iraq has less and less to do with individuals by the day.
So it's a shocking -- but not altogether unexpected -- surprise to learn that
we've trampled the rights of individuals in Abu Ghraib, enacted private,
visceral violence on their bodies in the name of an amorphous public good."
- From a New York Times article on a conversation then-National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger had about the My Lai massacre in Vietnam: "A transcript of this 1969 telephone conversation, with its uncanny echoes of the Iraq war and the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, at least in the fact of the photographs, if not in the severity of the wrongdoing, was released on Wednesday by the National Archives as part of 20,000 pages of records of Mr. Kissinger's telephone conversations."
Good
News Watch
Shiite hoodlum Muqtada al-Sadr has agreed to pull his militia out of Najaf,
the Associated Press reports. "Coalition forces will pull out of most of
Najaf once Iraqi security forces reenter the city and assume control of strategic
buildings from al-Sadr's militia, coalition spokesman Dan Senor told reporters
in Baghdad." Until then, the coalition will "suspend offensive operations
but will continue to provide security," Senor says.
Meanwhile, blogger Arthur Chrenkoff has another good-news roundup. Here's a summary:
- Rebuilding society. "Democracy is moving forward, step by step,"
with elected local councils taking on more authority. Iraq is conducting its
first postwar census. Exiles are flowing back in. A new Shiite university
is open in Hilla, south of Baghdad, which aims to reconcile Islam with modernity.
And Iraq's Kurds are inviting Israeli relatives to visit northern Iraq.
- Reconstruction. "Falling unemployment, rising wages, lower interest
rates and higher foreign investment" are not only improving life for
Iraqis but drawing in hundreds of thousands of Iranians looking for work.
Construction is booming in both Baghdad and the Kurdish north. The Trade Ministry
has registered more than 2,000 foreign and Iraqi companies in the past year.
"Iraq's small business entrepreneurs overwhelmingly predict a stronger
economy in the short term, and are planning to expand."
- Humanitarian efforts. "Iraqi education system is being rebuilt
- slowly: after years of neglect under Saddam and post-liberation looting."
Foreigners are now allowed to own and operate private schools in Iraq. The
U.S. Agency for International Development "has been working with the
Coalition Provisional Authority, the United Nations, World Bank, and International
Monetary Fund to [assist] Iraqis in reconstructing their country on literally
hundreds of projects." And "the fragile marsh ecosystems" are
being restored "so that Marsh Arabs can return to their traditional ways."
- The troops. A Marine intelligence officer writes: "This is my
third deployment with the 1st Marine Division to the Middle East. This is
the third time I've heard the quavering cries of the talking heads predicting
failure and calling for withdrawal. This is the third time I find myself shaking
my head in disbelief. . . . Nothing any talking head will say can
deter me or my fellow Marines from caring about the people of Iraq."
Coalition troops are working to rebuild utilities in a Shiite slum of Baghdad
and "played a major role in establishing the first Baghdad Police Academy."
Australian troops are " 'adopting' the children of the local kindergarten."
- Security. Fallujah is still quiet, and Muqtada al-Sadr is losing ground. The Army is buying guns from Iraqis. "By Tuesday night hundreds of Iraqis had been paid $761,357 for 56,536 items, from bullets to assault rifles to mortars and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, according to the military." And a new Iraqi militia called Black Flag is working with the coalition. It claims 5,000 Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish members.
Trial
Balloon Bursts
John Kerry will accept his party's presidential nomination at the Democratic
National Convention in July, the Associated Press reports. This hardly sounds
like news, but of course Kerry had floated the idea of delaying the nomination
for a month in order to game the campaign-finance regulations.
Fortunately for Kerry, memories are short and this is unlikely to cost him any votes directly--though it may contribute to the perception, at least among reporters covering the campaign, that he is a cynical operator, albeit not a particularly smooth one.
Great Orators of the Democratic Party
- "One man with courage makes a majority."--Andrew
Jackson
- "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."--Franklin
Roosevelt
- "The buck stops here."--Harry
Truman
- "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for
your country."--John
Kennedy
- "It's important to stay the course but if the course you're on is the wrong course and it's heading for the shoals, it's pretty smart to turn the rudder and change course. Staying the course is one thing, but if it's the wrong course, it's not a sign of strength, it's a sign of reckless stubbornness."--John Kerry
But
Not a Minute Sooner
"From the moment I take office, I will stand up to those special interests
and stand with hardworking families so that we can give America back its future
and its ideals."--JohnKerry.com
Jay
Leno, Ethics Authority
The New York Times is still harping on what it calls "widespread outrage"
over Justice Antonin Scalia's refusal to recuse himself from a case involving
the Office of Vice President. Scalia is a friend of, and recently went hunting
with, the man who currently holds that office, Dick Cheney. So whom does today's
Times editorial cite as an expert on judicial ethics? Read on:
The public wants judges to avoid even the suggestion of bias, and its displeasure has been clear in the case of Justice Scalia and Mr. Cheney. They became the butt of late-night comedy, including Jay Leno's famous joke about how Justice Scalia fell out of Mr. Cheney's pocket at a White House metal detector. . . . Justice Rehnquist may believe that the current rules go too far, but as Mr. Leno has shown, much of the country regards them as laughably ineffective.
Did the Times pay so much deference to Leno's views back when the butt of his jokes was President Clinton?
Zero-Tolerance
Watch
An unnamed 11-year-old boy, a fifth-grader at Maryland's Grasonville Elementary
School, did a class project on the topic "What would you take on a camping
trip and why?" It consisted of a shoebox containing various tools, including
a steak knife, reports the Star Democrat of Easton, Md. School officials declared
the utensil a "weapon" and suspended the boy for 10 days.
Dispatch
From the Porn Belt
"A cop couple caught moonlighting in a 45-minute porn video are probably
going to hold on to their badges," reports the San Francisco Chronicle.
The pair sent both shock waves and giggles throughout station houses this week when they were discovered to be the protagonists of "Bus Stop Whores," a hard-core romp apparently filmed in Los Angeles and now available on the Internet.
In one scene, the 29-year-old Francisco--who goes by the name Mira in the video--solicits a sex act for $500.
She and Watts, 27, then vigorously proceed to demonstrate a variety of full cavity search techniques not found in the standard police manual.
In his MoveOn.org speech yesterday, Gore blamed President Bush for the sexual abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. "We also know--and not just from De Sade and Freud--the psychological proximity between sexual depravity and other people's pain," Gore declared. No, not just from Sade and Freud, but also from government employees in a city Gore carried by a margin of 59.44%.
(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Craig Renner, Frank Russo, Linda Maxwell, Erik Moy, Tom Linehan, Allen O'Donnell, Charlie Gaylord, Aaron Ammerman, Dave Eastman, Jed Flint, Jeffrey Weinstein, Glenn Taubman, Doug Levene, Mary Pinkowish, Ariel Dybner, Clint Dare, Ted Barszewski, Daniel Foty, Marji Meyer, Gary Petersen, Dan O'Shea, Wayne Kuhaneck, John Archer, John Hamann, Michael Duval, Lance Romanoff, Michael Collins, Dave Holman, Fred Medero, George Mikos, Nancy Zimmerman, Raghu Desikan, Paul Dyck, William Schultz, Thomas Dillon, Edward Schulze, Rob Crowther, Jack Kraft, Jason Osborn, John Lott and David Whelan. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outlook: New evidence of a link between Iraq and al Qaeda.
- Peggy Noonan: Let's catch terrorists now, and leave the second-guessing for later.
- Brendan Miniter: On second thought, the first President Bush was right to stop at Kuwait.
- Daniel Grant: Owners of artworks have legal obligations to the artists. Is that fair?
