A few years back, Paul Shanklin put out a parody song entitled,
“Forrest Gore,” likening our current vice president to the lovable but
daft Tom Hanks character, Forrest Gump. Like most of Shanklin’s riffs,
it was great fun for connoisseurs of talk radio. And, like most
Shanklin, thought I, it was completely full of it.
I blame The New Republic. Though I’ve refused to pay actual money
for it after Marty Peretz fired Michael Kelly, they had me convinced
that Al Gore had the nomination locked up. He had the unions sown up;
big city mayors loved him; environmentalists marveled at the fact that
he had written a book! And nobody would dare challenge him.
Because, in the event he did, the veep would give him the electoral
spanking of his life.
What I should have seen then was that Al Gore has enough wit and
grace to make Dan Quayle, who just dropped out of the race, seem
electable by comparison. He’s also a complete moron.
Again, I should have seen this. He dropped enough hints. Who could
ever forget the time that he translated e pluribus unum, “out of
one, many” or his tribute to the world’s best basketball player,
“Michael Jackson”?
Quite a lot of people actually. For some reason, before the whole “I
invented the Internet” fiasco in March, these faux pas didn’t get quite
the same treatment as a certain spud comment. I won’t take a position
as to why, but, for some reason, the press did not find this nearly as
funny as reading a misspelled word off of a cue card.
Contrary to received wisdom, thought I, His Woodenness was a great
political asset. In his debates with Jack Kemp, he repeated the same
boring mantra over and over again and creamed His Royal Supply
Sideness. What I failed to consider was that the inner Gore may be just
as daft as his thick exterior. Seriously.
And, to level the most damning indictment of modern politics, he
isn’t “with it.”
Just think of it: knowing Bill Clinton’s track record of sticking it
to old friends the moment they are no longer politically useful, Gore
chose to defend our president during impeachment. He even called him,
“one of the best presidents in history” in a post-impeachment pep rally.
That might’ve been a noble, consistent and utterly principled thing
to do but, the author of “The Prince” would remind us, this is
politics. Friendships and loyalty count for little, and it’s better to
be feared than loved.
To put this in the starkest possible terms: Albert Gore was one
vote away from the presidency, the job he was raised for. His party
was smoldering at the man who they were forced to defend and public
opinion was conflicted.
Had he done an about-face and held a press conference to announce his
support for the removal of Bill Clinton from office, it would have been
the event of the decade. It would have made the cover of every paper.
The nightly news would have expanded to gauge the public’s reaction.
The president would have been impeached.
Gore would now be president and none in his party would dare
challenge him for the nomination. For that matter, Governor Bush
probably wouldn’t have taken the plunge and Senator Bradley would be
just another old bore.
The reigning idea among intellectuals today is that our vice
president is smart (or wonkish, if you prefer) and normally astute, but,
through a bad spot of political luck, he got hobbled. That is, he
looks politically inept. Daniel Patrick Moynihan captured this
best when he said, “Nothing is the matter with Mr. Gore — except he
can’t be elected president.”
But what if there is something wrong with our vice president?
What if that woodenness and those incredible mistakes — not knowing the
difference between Michael Jordan and Michael Jackson, seeing busts of
the American Founders and asking, “Who are they?” claiming to have
invented the Internet — were not meant to lower expectations? What
then? Is it possible that, for seven years, the man a heartbeat away
from the most powerful office in the land, is (to borrow a trick from
his first campaign speech) loco in la cabasa?
The first stab at this was taken by a popular historian in The New
York Observer: “As for Mr. Gore, I have come to the conclusion that he
may well be mad. This is a thought, obviously, that will require some
development, but he seems to have the marks of chronic, lifelong
depression. Tipper should get off the meds; he’s the one with the
problem.”
So said Richard Brookhiser, a conservative but hardly a rabid one.
Mr. Bradley ought to read the column. He just might be onto something.
Jeremy Lott is Managing
Editor of the daily webzine, The American
Partisan.
