[SGCOS]

Along with Al, where has Tom Daschle been? Haven't seen nor heard from him since the Pink Tie-rade.

[saveliberty]

The problem with the "get another career" idea is that Gore does not work well with others.

At some point, a person has to take responsibility for the life decisions he has made and has to decide what to fix and what to live with. He can't because he is addicted to mysery.

[Savage Beast]

"he was never really suited for the job"

...and every time he opens his mouth he confirms it.

BUSH
REAGAN
LINCOLN
JEFFERSON
WASHINGTON

McGovern
Mondale
Dukakis
Gore
Kerry

[Boundless]

> The tragedy of Al Gore isn't that he lost the presidency
> in a fluke--but that he was never really suited for the
> job in the first place.

Al Gore and John Kerry share this trait.

Both thought that being POTUS was their Destiny.

Gore, because daddy raised him with that goal.
Kerry, because it was revealed to him that he was JFK-2.

[Verginius Rufus]

Some other might-have-beens: Spiro Agnew would have been President if he hadn't taken bribes as governor of Maryland. Hiram Johnson would have been President if he had accepted the VP slot on the Republican ticket in 1920.

[Revenge of Sith]

> Mario Cuomo, who might have been president if he had run in 1992

Unlike Clinton, Cuomo was unpopular in his own state in 1992. He was too liberal and had no chance of winning the election.

[Asclepius]

He seems born for the world of think tanks and schoolrooms, of dissertations and seminars, of endless digressions about this and that.

I disagree. Yes, Gore can cite authors and string together references. Only he does so with no discipline or sense of direction; he does so associatively, almost randomnly. In other words, he seems to like to read and listen, but he has no idea how to apply or process what knowledge he consumes: he thinks-acts-writes-speaks like an undergraduate trying to impress a professor with how much he knows.

[x]

She's right, Gore is scatterbrained, but is Jack Kennedy really the best counterexample? Surely, there's a happy medium between being completely distracted and completely obsessed by politics and personal advancement. One wouldn't want a leader who didn't want to be one and couldn't concentrate on the job, but knowing that the person in charge has "found his bliss" in political performances and maneuvering isn't necessarily a comfort.

[Cicero]

Oh, nonsense. Gore would have been equally bad as an intellectual or a teacher. "Earth in the Balance" is a severe embarrassment. He is full of flaky ideas, but his thinking goes about 2" deep.

[ride the whirlwind]

"He finds dealing with other people draining. . . . He should have been a college professor or a scientist or an engineer."

Don't professors have to deal with people quite a lot? What Gore and Kerry both lack are a moral compass, leadership skills, and a vision for America.