Monday, May 31, 2004
The Gore Factor
Having contained and defeated Howard Dean - and also having apparently enlisted him in the key project of containing the Nader factor - John Kerry must also concern himself with a perhaps greater challenge: keeping Al Gore on message.
Gore's public addresses over the last few years have gotten increasingly angry and irate. Perhaps this is the "real Al Gore" coming to the fore. If so, it's a pity because I like the pre-2000 Gore more. The new Gore has the same strategic inability as the old Gore, but his ability to make poor choices is further abetted by the increased absence of internal checks. Gore is currently going on a head-hunt, accusing the administration of creating a gulag system and being behind the Abu Ghraib abuses. Since he was speaking to the MoveOn choir, Gore felt free to cut loose and demand the resignation of pretty much the entire Bush national security team (for more than simply the Abu Ghraib abuses).
These demands for mass resignations - articulated not only by Gore - strike me as a distraction from the main event. Obviously they're not going to happen, not least because the Bushies do not admit that they are wrong. More to the point, voters will want to hear the Democratic plan for America, instead of the Democratic plan to get the Bush administration to field second-stringers in national security positions for the next 7 months during - it should be said - a time of increased threats from terror groups. This just looks like a head-hunting expedition. It muddles the party's message and mires it in attack politics.
Gore gives this agenda a powerful avatar, which is why he needs to be contained. He has appallingly bad political judgement. Let us count the ways: prematurely conceding Midwestern states like Ohio in 2000 (which he lost by only 4 points), needlessly bashing Bill Bradley in such a way as to alienate Bradley supporters and create an opening for Nader, then underestimating and ignoring the Nader threat, failing to counter Bush's rhetoric about being a compromiser, failing to attack the Republican Party for its partisan attacks during the impeachment (the most effective way to undermine the "Bush-as-compromiser" thread), allowing his petulant grudge toward Bill Clinton to deny him the services of the Democratic Party's most effective campaigner, campaigning for a nakedly selective recount in Florida rather than a total remedy of a statewide manual recount or revote. If this Faulknerian summation seems to be missing something, consider his remarkably arrogant endorsement of Howard Dean. Gore did so to circumvent the primary process, based on the bizarre notion that the Democrats didn't have the luxury of electorally choosing a candidate. We call it democracy Al, not a luxury. His deplorable failure to give Joe Lieberman the slightest notification has been noted here and elsewhere. The depletion of Gore's political capital by this debacle may be the biggest boon of the Dean loss.
But there's still a lot of campaigning left to do, and Gore will try to make his impact. Kerry will need to be concerned about what the former VP will be saying. Gore remains a huge figure within the party. He will most certainly be speaking at the convention. If he is allowed to shove campaign rhetoric in a direction that satiates his own anger, it will be to Kerry's detriment. Don't believe me? Consider the title of a recent National Review piece by Byron York: "Republicans Love It When Gore Gets Mad: The more screaming, the better." York cites an anonymous GOP strategist who says:
Let's ensure that 2000 remains the last election blown by Al Gore.
Having contained and defeated Howard Dean - and also having apparently enlisted him in the key project of containing the Nader factor - John Kerry must also concern himself with a perhaps greater challenge: keeping Al Gore on message.
Gore's public addresses over the last few years have gotten increasingly angry and irate. Perhaps this is the "real Al Gore" coming to the fore. If so, it's a pity because I like the pre-2000 Gore more. The new Gore has the same strategic inability as the old Gore, but his ability to make poor choices is further abetted by the increased absence of internal checks. Gore is currently going on a head-hunt, accusing the administration of creating a gulag system and being behind the Abu Ghraib abuses. Since he was speaking to the MoveOn choir, Gore felt free to cut loose and demand the resignation of pretty much the entire Bush national security team (for more than simply the Abu Ghraib abuses).
These demands for mass resignations - articulated not only by Gore - strike me as a distraction from the main event. Obviously they're not going to happen, not least because the Bushies do not admit that they are wrong. More to the point, voters will want to hear the Democratic plan for America, instead of the Democratic plan to get the Bush administration to field second-stringers in national security positions for the next 7 months during - it should be said - a time of increased threats from terror groups. This just looks like a head-hunting expedition. It muddles the party's message and mires it in attack politics.
Gore gives this agenda a powerful avatar, which is why he needs to be contained. He has appallingly bad political judgement. Let us count the ways: prematurely conceding Midwestern states like Ohio in 2000 (which he lost by only 4 points), needlessly bashing Bill Bradley in such a way as to alienate Bradley supporters and create an opening for Nader, then underestimating and ignoring the Nader threat, failing to counter Bush's rhetoric about being a compromiser, failing to attack the Republican Party for its partisan attacks during the impeachment (the most effective way to undermine the "Bush-as-compromiser" thread), allowing his petulant grudge toward Bill Clinton to deny him the services of the Democratic Party's most effective campaigner, campaigning for a nakedly selective recount in Florida rather than a total remedy of a statewide manual recount or revote. If this Faulknerian summation seems to be missing something, consider his remarkably arrogant endorsement of Howard Dean. Gore did so to circumvent the primary process, based on the bizarre notion that the Democrats didn't have the luxury of electorally choosing a candidate. We call it democracy Al, not a luxury. His deplorable failure to give Joe Lieberman the slightest notification has been noted here and elsewhere. The depletion of Gore's political capital by this debacle may be the biggest boon of the Dean loss.
But there's still a lot of campaigning left to do, and Gore will try to make his impact. Kerry will need to be concerned about what the former VP will be saying. Gore remains a huge figure within the party. He will most certainly be speaking at the convention. If he is allowed to shove campaign rhetoric in a direction that satiates his own anger, it will be to Kerry's detriment. Don't believe me? Consider the title of a recent National Review piece by Byron York: "Republicans Love It When Gore Gets Mad: The more screaming, the better." York cites an anonymous GOP strategist who says:
- We're delighted by it, because what you see now is a coalescing of the 'blame America first' wing of the Democratic party that has been largely absent from the stage since 1984. It was an anger-filled speech before an angry audience belonging to an angry group. All these things are a turnoff to people.
Let's ensure that 2000 remains the last election blown by Al Gore.
