THE DENOUEMENT OF AL GORE
Part 1: As His Own Man
bryan beller (11.1.00)

Al Gore, a man showing himself to be comprised of paradoxically equal parts arrogant ideological clod and cynical political opportunist, is demonstrating to America just how. And he's redefining the potential for irony in modern political life along the way.

It wasn't supposed to be like this, but the feeling is out there now. You can talk about polls and margins of error all you want; this election, in ways both measurable and ethereal, has swung to Bush. At this point, you have to wonder, as the brilliant Maureen Dowd does, how a) Gore can be losing considering the economic and political circumstances he inherited; b) how he can be losing to a (insert your own disparaging adjective/noun combination here; there are so many I can't choose just one) such as George W. Bush.

Most people think the debates are what did it. I'll admit to misjudging the outcome completely. A tie benefited Gore, I reasoned, because voters would be loath to kick an incumbent to the curb in a time of such bountiful prosperity. There would need to be a damned good reason -- war, stock market crash, etc. -- to change horses in the middle of this stream. Wrong, said the polls (and later, the punditry). Gore won the debates on substance but lost them in style, which counted more for some reason. Undecided voters just don't like Gore, we heard. And since everyone's so fat and happy, personality is trumping ability as this year's essential prerequisite.

I think it's deeper than that. Much deeper. It goes right to the heart of who Gore is, the decisions he's made over the past six months, and why he's made them.

Al Gore has been in public service for most of his adult life. As a Congressman and Senator from Tennessee, he established a record one can only classify as moderate. On defense, he maintained a reputation as a hawkish Democrat while mastering the minutiae of arms control. He was also one of the few Democratic Senators to vote in favor of the Persian Gulf War. Distasteful as it was, he and his wife Tipper got out in front of the family values issue with their campaign for warning stickers on records with lyrics deemed offensive to children. He followed that up with leadership on the V-chip and the ratings system for television shows containing sexual and violent material. Economically, he was no lefty either; he championed President Clinton's 1996 welfare reform bill, a liberal nightmare that required those able to work to do so, put time limits on government assistance, and reduced welfare rolls by over 50% in a four-year span.

Like it or not, he was the living, breathing embodiment of the vision of the Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist group that envisioned the Clinton/Gore "third way" long before they got elected. Meanwhile, he continued to be a steadfast supporter of abortion rights, gun control and affirmative action. Gore's record didn't necessarily make him the left's best friend, but neither was Clinton, and it never stopped ol' Bill from being idolized by them.

Gore's entire political career seemed to be crafted to insulate him from the time-honored Republican charges of big-spending, big government, morally defunct, family-unfriendly liberalism, while still remaining a viable Democratic candidate for President. The only exception appeared to be his pet issue, the environment, on which he wrote a controversial book called Earth In The Balance. Controversial in the sense that it attacked the internal combustion engine as a necessity-based future obsolescence, and unique in the sense that it stood alone in his political history as a position seemingly not based in electoral vote potential. But the man has his principles, right?

Fast forward to earlier this year. The economy is, by any measure, over the top. The Republican Congressional leadership is invisible, discredited from the impeachment debacle and still smarting from their association with Newt Gingrich. George W. Bush has just survived the political fight of his life -- from John McCain -- by running so far to the right that he bumped into Bob Jones University on his way over. Clinton is stained with terrible personal approval ratings thanks to his dalliances with Monica, but his job approval ratings remain above 60%. Gore has just smashed Bill Bradley from the center, portraying him as a leftist throwback and threat to the Clinton/Gore prosperity -- exactly the kind of charge Gore worked his whole life to refute. An embarrassment of riches, no?

Gore, however inexplicably, saw only the negatives. He was too closely associated with Clinton's ethical problems, he thought. That campaign finance stuff, the Buddhist temple, "no controlling legal authority," all bad stuff that the GOP could hit him with in the general election. Can't have that. Gotta prevent that any way I can.

So along came Elian Gonzalez. The Republicans wanted the kid to stay, the law be damned. The Clinton administration thought the government should enforce the law by any means necessary. But look deeper -- Florida was the cornerstone state in the Bush electoral strategy, and everyone knew it, even back then. No way was W. going to lose a state in which his brother Jeb was the Governor. Gore looked and saw a two-for-one: a break with Clinton, and a chance to suck up to the Cuban-American community, a key to the state's vote. And he supported Elian's stay in the U.S.

People are smarter than politicians think. Gore hadn't shown any inclination to speak out on Cuban-American issues prior to this. The GOP slammed him for flip-flopping. The Clinton administration let him hang out to dry -- "hey, you want to do it all by yourself, well, go ahead, big boy!" -- and the perception of Chameleon Al was created on a nationwide scale for the first time.

But hey, it was only April.

Let's move on to the conventions. Bush had his moment in the sun and got his message across, which appeared to be, "I'm not as scary as those other Republicans you know. I like people and people like me. We'll all get along better if I get elected. The economy's good, but Clinton and Gore messed up a whole bunch of other stuff. Besides, they're liars."

Gore should have been salivating. All he had to do was let people know that he'd continue the economic policies of Clinton, and that he wouldn't let anyone give him a blowjob except Tipper, and that would have done it. But again, a strangely paranoid Gore saw only the negatives. He saw trouble on his left flank. Some labor unionists and hardcore environmentalists were entertaining the possibility of supporting Ralph Nader. Perhaps driven by ego or jealousy of Clinton's masterful convention speech (and maybe even press coverage of Bill's supposed refusal to "leave the spotlight"), Gore still saw his benefactor as a net negative. And so, in the days leading up to Gore's own speech, he made a calculation that told you everything you needed to know about him.

After a career of moderation, of charter membership in the DLC, of consistently positioning himself as a New Democrat, he decided to throw it all away.for liberal populism? "I stand here before you as my own man.I know there are powerful forces allayed against you.I'm here to fight for you against the big oil companies, the big drug companies, the HMO's."

It was a small-minded calculation. He thought, I'll get Joe Lieberman to give me instant separation from Clinton's sleaze factor and insulation from GOP attacks, and at the same time I'll run to the left to insulate me from Nader's new raiders. After all, Bush is such a lightweight, I don't even need to consider swing voters. They'll be mine anyway after I kill him in the debates. You want triangulation? I got your triangulation right here!

The unbridled arrogance of this decision was mindblowing, but that wasn't the most offensive part of it. What truly got me was the sense that Gore didn't really care about who he was just so long as it served his political interest of the moment, and moreover, he cared even less about how it all looked to anyone who might have been paying attention. Don't take me for naïve; all politicians do it to a certain degree. But the transparency and cloddishness of such a sudden lurch insulted a large segment of the population. Maybe they didn't feel it immediately, but these things have a way of sinking in over time. Maybe some people even remembered his Elian Gonzalez position from a couple of months back.

Meanwhile, Gore was so concerned about not being associated with Clinton that he forgot to associate himself with Clinton's winning issues. The incredible economic record of the past eight years was just an afterthought compared to what Super Al was going to do for everyone with his targeted tax cuts. The overheated sentiment even found its way into his campaign speeches: "You ain't seen nothin' yet!"

But with things being as good as they were, people didn't really care about new economic proposals all that much. Clinton's were just fine, thank you kindly, so can someone just continue them please?

Not Al. He was better than that.

Once he disowned himself from all things Clinton, the race suddenly became a personality contest. This proposal, that proposal -- who cared? Judging from the reaction to the first debate, hardly anyone. Sure, Gore made Bush look like a frat boy with a hangover on Jeopardy, but all that sighing and interrupting..

Then, when they asked Gore about why he was sighing so audibly during Bush's lame responses, Gore said he didn't know the microphone or the camera would be on him while Bush was speaking. Uh, what? You could almost hear the American public speak with one exasperated voice. You didn't know the camera was on? You've been in politics for twenty-five fucking years and you didn't know the mic was live? During a PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE?!

Who needed a Clinton sleaze factor when you had Gore creating a record for lying all on his own, and without the accomplishments to boot? Bush's people did some quick polling and -- surprise -- they started swinging for the fences about Gore's exaggerations, half-truths and flat-out lies on the campaign trail. Gore got caught making up a story about the cost of prescription drugs for his dog and grandmother. He used "real people" to illustrate his policy points, but their stories turned out to be false as well. Oops. Oh well. There was always the second debate.

In which he sat there as if someone fed him Quaaludes for breakfast. You could just see him thinking out loud: "OK, if you didn't like me last time, maybe you'll like me this time." Did this sudden change in demeanor strike you as an accident? Was anything Al Gore ever did an accident?

He wanted to run as his own man, and he was doing so. The slight shift away from Gore happened around the time of the second debate, and it never came back. It was entirely personality driven. And I don't mean that in the shallow sense, either. A certain percentage of people were starting to see what I saw, a man incapable of projecting a core set of beliefs, a man without a personality, a man who didn't know who he was. A man who would say or do anything to get elected.and be really, painfully obvious about it.

The third debate only sealed it. He came out as the Old Aggressive Al. This was after the New Polite Al. Which was after the Smarmy, Disapproving, Sighing Al. Along with the Fighting For You Populist Al who coexists with the New Democrat Al. And the Suddenly Pro-Miami-Cubans Al. And the Family Values Al.

Most difficult to reconcile was the post-impeachment "Bill Clinton is one of the greatest Presidents in history" Al with the "I stand before you as my own man" Al. Like I said, these things have a way of soaking into the consciousness.

But wait -- how come Clinton gets away with it? Because everyone knows who Bill Clinton is. He never pretended to be a saint. All he ever promised is that he would deliver the goods, and he did. Gore thinks of himself as better than that. He wants people to see him as better than that, as smarter than that, as more deserving than that.

But his means have betrayed his ends. If he's really sincere about his newfound populism, does that mean that his centrist positions in the past were purely for political positioning? Well, of course, and that's nothing new in politics. But now, not just political junkies and C-Span watchers know. Everyone knows.

The results of his small-time thinking lay before us. Florida, thanks to Gore's Cuban-American pander (as well as Lieberman's presence), is improbably in play for the Democrats, but at least eight other states that should be solidly Democratic are wavering towards Bush. His insistence on running "as his own man" -- meaning without Clinton or his record -- continues to this day, but New Populist Al can no longer make the case as the rightful heir to that record. The GOP is hammering him for being a big-spending liberal, something he spent his whole life trying to avoid. Clinton sees this, offers campaign help, and is summarily rebuffed by Gore. Angrily. You can call Bush anything you want, but he wasn't so egotistical as to not ask for help from Colin Powell, Norman Schwarzkopf, Dick Cheney, even his father -- the people who could help him the most. Gore sees himself as too good for that, and even if he wanted to ask Clinton for help now, he couldn't without looking worse than he already does.

And, most cruelly of all, Ralph Nader is polling an excruciatingly crucial 3-5% in swing states like Michigan, Oregon and Wisconsin. Gore was reduced to begging environmentalists -- what should be his only core constituency, based on his career in politics, not to mention publishing -- for support. He even asked Nader to throw his supporters his way. Nader, being Nader, gave Gore a one-finger salute for an answer.

For Gore, an intelligent man, the twin ironies of the Green Party denying him his winning margin and losing the debates to a consistently amiable lesser intellect must be crushing.

It didn't have to be this way, but Gore has no one to blame but himself. Through a series of cynically calculated and misguided, insecure decisions, Gore has created the perception that his stands on the issues are only temporary. He's run a turgid campaign, one that's descended into complete negativism and scare tactics. He hasn't offered a single coherent reason to vote for him, other than to protect us from whatever the Republicans could do if they win.

Even if something weird happens and Gore ends up winning, he will have lost his identity in the process. In sum, he deserves to lose.

Part 2