NYO: Gore Is Bigger Than Ever! - ‘Damn! He’d make one fine President.’

[samhsarah]

By Ben Smith

Mr. Gore—no longer Bill Clinton’s straight man, no longer the wooden, cautious candidate of 2000—has been raising his profile through a series of impassioned speeches against the Bush administration. They began in September 2002, when he warned against the invasion of Iraq, which he said “has the potential to seriously damage our ability to win the war against terrorism and to weaken our ability to lead the world.”

He dwelled, presciently, on the risk of post-invasion chaos. That speech and others like it, along with his once-mocked warnings about global warning, have transformed him for Democrats into a kind of Cassandra, always right and always ignored. And his clear anti-war stand is in sharp contrast to Hillary Clinton’s obsessively monitored but hard-to-explain position on Iraq. Nobody in Mr. Gore’s political circle suggests, on the record or off, that he is actively planning a run for President in 2008. But the film “falls into the ‘we’ll see if that gives anything legs’ category,” said a major Democratic donor who backed Mr. Gore in 2000 and is in touch with the former Vice President’s circle of friends and allies.

First things first: Mr. Gore has said that he’s not running for President, although he said it in less-than-Shermanesque fashion. And he isn’t touching the same political bases as the half-dozen other men—oh, and that one woman—thought to be considering a Presidential campaign. He’s not massaging donors’ egos or stroking local pols in Iowa and New Hampshire. “He couldn’t be doing less,” said the donor. He’s busy warning of global warming and running an experimental new cable-television project, Current TV, whose viewer-driven, interactive model seems to be arriving at the right time.

And yet. And yet. Two prominent Democrats said that Mr. Gore didn’t discourage them when they raised the prospect of another run. And in some circles, Mr. Gore suddenly appears not just possible but unavoidable. In the new mix of power, money and ideology organized around Ms. David and Arianna Huffington in Los Angeles, in the burgeoning liberal blogosphere and among some of the former Vice President’s old friends, Mr. Gore appears the only alternative to Hillary Clinton. That is rich with irony—more than a decade ago, Mrs. Clinton was Mr. Gore’s foil in the internal squabbles of the Clinton White House.

http://www.observer.com/20060130/20060130_Ben_Smith_pageone_coverstory1.asp

[AtomicKitten]

1. We should be so lucky if he ran. n/t

[AuntiBush]

13. And, We Should... Hope Gore Runs in 2008. He'd Get My Vote

before any other.

2nd choice: Kerry
3rd choice: Edwards

[blossomstar]

2. He is so very presidential! Thanks for this post.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

3. Don't toy with me!

If only...

[oldtime dfl_er]

4. Honestly? We aren't worthy

I wouldn't blame him if he moved to New Zealand, but that's kind of the point - he never would, because he is a true patriot.

http://www.cafepress.com/scarebaby/658059

[pscot]

5. He's got my vote

And I have no doubt he would carry the state of Washington by a wide margin.

[sweetm2475]

6. K&R!

:kick:

[dave29]

7. It would be Justice

plain and simple. Karmic, beautiful, poetic, justice.

Please make Gore our President. He'll be the best we ever had.

[bigendian]

8. Albert Gore is the last son of liberty.

If he doesn't get the presidency it will be a loss to us all. He has raised the alarm time and time again. Are we listening? Better yet, are we participating?
He has prompted me to take action by holding my representative's accountable and telling them exactly what is on my mind.
They want to keep their jobs so don't believe they won't listen if we all speak up.
First order of business. Appoint a special council.

[satya]

9. Voted for him reluctantly in 2000 -- would work my butt off for him in '08

BUT -- he must have a SUPERB campaign manager. And we've gotta be voting on paper, absentee if necessary.

There are so many truly fine possibilities for a Veep, it would be hard to choose just one.

Now, back to my fax machine -- Alito would probably vote to stop the counting even BEFORE we voted.

[DURHAM D]

10. The February issue of Vanity Fair has a vanity article about

Karena Gore - oldest daughter.

My gut reaction - Al is thinking about running. Also, Karena has a book coming out about important women of the 20th century - good timing.

[bpilgrim]

11. if Nixon can do it, so can Gore!

we gotta fix the BBV issue though or no one has a chance against the WORST PRESIDENT EVER :argh:

peace

[Festivito]

12. Will he now defend against Bush lying about him?

Bush joked if he had "invented" the calculator.

AND, GORE JUST TOOK IT. Let all the listeners believe that he himself had lied about his Internet work. He didn't fight for himself, RIGHT ON NATIONAL TV.

Bush lied,
National TV,
LIVE,
with a media hiding Gore from us,
And, Gore with a golden opportunity, live, ... HELPED BUSH.

GORE had said:
"in creating" connoting WHILE IT GREW, NOT:
"invented" which connotes beginning it.

[Singular73]

14. Oh Shut up

WTF are you talking about man.

Elections are getting screwed with, we are about to enter WWIII, the seperation of powers are being merged, people are being spied upon, and you are talking about "inventing the internet"?

You are as bad as the Rethugs.

[Uncle Joe]

15. Time has slowed down for me,

it was speeding up as I aged, the years getting shorter as they became a smaller percent of my life. Today with fascism taking hold of our nation's government and MSM, it seems like forever until 2008 or even next November, it's excruciatingly slow.

Thanks for posting samhsarah.

Kicked and nominated.


:kick:

[byronius]

16. Albert America. The real President.

Still the last elected President of The United States. Four More Years!

[Admiral Loinpresser]

17. A little bit of context for this article, re MSM...

The article is noteworthy in that the press is having a progressively harder (no pun intended) time ignoring the last legitimately elected president. But the authors ignore the greatest media scandal of modern times: the systematic and unprecedented character assassination of Al Gore in 2000. Indeed they go further and actually exhibit the same repugnant behavior (they actually mentioned "earth tones" in a derogatory fashion). Simply unprofessional and akin to the journalistic treason performed by Kit Seelye, Ceci Connolly, Chris Matthews, Brian Williams, etc., etc.

To pretend that Gore somehow ran a bad campaign in 2000 is ludicrous. He came back from about 20 points behind when he started in March 1999 to beat Bush. This despite the most biased coverage of a presidential campaign in modern American history, perhaps all American history. The authors conveniently overlook this outrageous media scandal. Shame on them.

For details, one may view Jane Hall's excellent article on the disparity in coverage between Gore and Bush in 2000.

http://archives.cjr.org/year/00/3/hall.asp

For a fuller account, see the 1999 and 2000 archives of the dailyhowler.com.

Here is a relevant sample from the Howler (http://dailyhowler.com/dh122302.shtml):

ABC’s Mark Halperin on this very phenomenon. “Somewhere along the line,” Halperin says, “the dominant political reporters for most dominant news organizations decided they didn’t like , and they thought the story line on any given day was about his being a phony or a liar or a waffler. Within the subculture of political reporting, there was almost peer pressure not to say something neutral, let alone nice, about his ideas, his political skills, his motivations.”