Glad you're home safe and sound, IG. Do tell us tales from the capital!
Maybe he didn't sell enough books. Or maybe he wasn't funny enough on "Saturday Night Live" (though we loved the scene with him and Joe Lieberman in the hot tub). Whatever the reason, Al Gore pulled the plug yesterday, pleasing Lieberman (who now gets to run), a large swath of the Democratic Party and, it must be admitted, the pundits, who were groaning at the prospect of a rematch against Bush.
.... Why did Gore, who after all won the popular vote two years ago, pass up another race? He told Stahl he had "come to closure" on the fact that he'll probably never be president, and that a rematch "would inevitably involve a focus on the past." But on some level he may have been facing reality. The combination of the post-9/11 climate and the feeling that he blew a great opportunity in '00 would have meant a tough time taking on a popular Republican incumbent.
Maybe that's why Gore seemed so loose lately. No matter what Gore did, the press kept accusing him of reinventing himself. Maybe this is the ultimate reinvention: a career politician deciding to have a life. Now they won't have Gore to kick around any more. ...
Hillary has been much too quiet lately. My gosh, the machinations that must be going on in her inner sanctum. And speaking of the hideous Clintons:
GENEVA -- Former U.S. president Bill Clinton joined actress Sophia Loren this weekend to narrate a recording by a Swiss orchestra, newspapers said yesterday. The weekly newspaper Dimanche said the recording project of the European company PentaTone was "top secret," but that Clinton and Loren read different passages as Kent Nagano conducted the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.
It appears to have been connected with a project announced in October by the Russian National Orchestra, which said Nagano would make a record of Tchaikovsky's Peter and the Wolf for PentaTone with Clinton, Loren and Mikhail Gorbachev as narrators.
Clinton, in Geneva about 24 hours before he left yesterday, also gave a speech on the search for peace in the Middle East, the newspaper said.
The Zurich-based weekly SonntagsBlick said it had learned Clinton would be the top guest at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, next month. He attended the annual Alpine gathering of government and business leaders three years ago when still president. source
This must have been prior to his Rotterdam speech in which he claimed he gave the North Koreans the "what for" over their nukes.