Ugh. As if we needed any more proof that Presidential politics is nothing but a beauty contest. As I recall, William H. Taft was a widebody.
Posted on 03/02/2007 1:34:39 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
JUST hours after Al Gore was fawned over by Leonardo DiCaprio and a host of other Hollywood luminaries at this week's Academy Awards ceremony, Hillary Clinton's top advisers got together to consider how best to handle what was threatening to become a tidal wave of pressure for Gore to run for the US presidency.
After careful consideration, they let it be known that they were going to continue to closely monitor Gore's weight. Several journalists were briefed on this by a "senior Clinton official" who said the Clinton team was on the lookout for any evidence that Gore is about to get himself a gym membership and a personal trainer - if he has not already.
Polls show Americans are now prepared to elect a woman president or a black president, but not a fat president. And Al Gore is fat, certainly much fatter than he was in 2000 when he won the popular vote against George Bush, only to be denied the presidency when the Supreme Court refused to allow a recount in Florida.
Many Democrats believe Gore was cheated of the presidency by a conservative majority of judges on the Supreme Court. They were furious, inconsolable. So was Gore, even though he publicly accepted the decision and graciously wished Bush success.
Gore disappeared from public view for months, travelling in Europe and sailing around the Greek Islands, wondering what to do next. He was a 52-year-old failed presidential candidate, who had served nine years in the Senate before he was chosen by Bill Clinton as his running mate in 1992. Politics had been his life.
What he did next was put on weight and grow a beard, a signal, said his wife, Tipper, that he was done with politics and done with Washington. The loss to Bush had been so personally traumatic that he determined that his political career was well and truly over.
So, fat matters with Gore: it is a sign of the level of his political ambition. That is why the Clinton camp reckons that if he hits the gym, it will be time for panic - it will offer compelling evidence that Gore will make a run for the Democratic Party's nomination, a move that would completely change the dynamics of the 2008 presidential race.
In particular, the dynamics would change for Clinton, who is struggling to overcome the perception among Democrats that she is too divisive a figure to win a general election. On top of that, the New York senator's refusal to completely repudiate her vote in 2002 to authorise the war in Iraq means she will never get the support of the party's activist base - the people who will play a key role in the party's primaries next year.
The Clinton campaign believes it can fend off the challenge from Barack Obama. While Obama remains a potent challenger who, according to the latest polls, is catching Clinton as the preferred candidate of registered Democrats, his lack of experience could prove too big an obstacle for him to overcome.
Gore, were he to run, would be an even more threatening challenge for Clinton. There are the Academy Awards for his documentary on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, and the Nobel Peace Prize nomination, and the fact that scalpers charge exorbitant prices for tickets to his sold-out speaking engagements.
Gore has spent the past six years campaigning on the threat of climate change, an issue whose time has finally arrived. On top of that, he has launched Current TV, a cable television channel for young people, has been appointed to the board of Apple, is a consultant to Google and a visiting professor at the University of Tennessee, in his home state.
All this is great for keeping his name in the public eye. On television he is invariably self-deprecating and funny, qualities he did not seem to possess in 2000, when he seemed wooden, unauthentic and in the thrall of his campaign consultants.
But the main reason Gore is such a threat to Clinton and, for that matter, to Obama and to the other contenders for the Democratic nomination is that he remains a political figure of substance, a former vice-president with the sort of experience that Obama cannot match and with a standing in the party - and in the country - Clinton would die for.
Gore has insisted he is not interested in running for office. His standard response to the question is: "I am not planning to run for president again." There is no committee canvassing prospective financial supporters and the half a dozen "Gore for President" websites are run by volunteers with no direct connections to Gore. But the speculation keeps bubbling along.
One of the factors that will influence his decision whether or not to run will be just how well Clinton performs in the next few months. If the polls go south for her, if the contest with Obama gets more bitter - and there were signs recently that it would after the Hollywood mogul David Geffen, a former Clinton supporter who is now backing Obama, said the Clintons were liars and that Bill Clinton was the same man he was six years ago - the chances of a Gore run would increase greatly.
He would certainly have one huge advantage over Clinton when it comes to winning Democratic Party primaries: Gore was always opposed to the war in Iraq.
"The chaos in the aftermath of a military victory in Iraq could easily pose a far greater danger to the United States than we presently face from Saddam," he said before the invasion.
Key figures in the Democratic Party believe Gore will enter the race, probably in September, well in time to raise the money he will need in the run-up to the first primaries in January.
James Carville, a senior adviser to Bill Clinton who is still close to the Clintons, believes Gore will try again.
"I think he's going to run," Carville said recently. "Running for president is like sex. You don't do it once and forget about it."
The former president Jimmy Carter recently said he had called Gore so many times to press him about running that Gore had finally told Carter to stop calling him about it. "I don't know whether he will run, but his burning issue at the moment is global warming and preventing it," he said. "He can do infinitely more to accomplish that goal from the White House than he can making movies that get Oscars."
Gore may continue to insist he has no plans to run, but he certainly has plans to keep himself in the public eye. He will be the star witness at global warming hearings to be held by committees of both houses of Congress in three weeks.
In May, Gore will publish a book with perhaps the longest title in the history of US publishing. The Assault on Reason: How the Politics of Fear, Secrecy and Blind Faith Subvert Wise Decision Making, Degrade Our Democracy and Put Our Country and Our World at Peril is likely to be an instant bestseller and sounds very much like a presidential campaign manifesto.
And in July, he will star in a 24-hour "Save Our Selves" concert marathon that will include top musicians from across the world, including Australia. The organisers expect more than 2 billion people across the globe to either attend a concert or watch the event on television.
But in all the buzz and hype about Gore - the sober Financial Times recently called him a cultural icon - what is forgotten is that his 2000 campaign was widely viewed as a failure. Gore was labelled the presidential candidate who lost the unlosable election, a clumsy, geeky politician who tended to exaggerate his achievements - he once claimed to have invented the internet - who was, in the words of one commentator "uncomfortable in his own skin".
And, according to the conventional wisdom of the time, Gore made the fatal political mistake of distancing himself from Bill Clinton, who despite his impeachment and his sex scandals, left the White House with an approval rating of more than 60 per cent.
Some Democratic Party officials, even those who are actively encouraging Gore to run, are concerned that once he enters the political fray, the "old" inept Gore will return. According to some of his friends who have spoken about this to journalists, Gore's reluctance to re-enter the political fray is at least in part due to his enjoyment of his current role, that he is, in the words of one friend, "at peace with himself".
But the pressure on Gore to run is already immense and will likely grow in the coming months. He is the elephant in the room in the race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination - a rather large elephant at the moment but a few months in the gym would change that.
Even democrats know Al Gump is a MORON..
In other words, the Clintons called in their media support to take Gore out.
******
Michael Gawenda is an Australian journalist and was editor of The Age from 1997 to 2004.
He was born in a refugee camp in Austria following the Second World War. His family moved to Melbourne, Australia in 1949, where he attended state school and high school. He studied economics and politics at university.[1]
He started his career in 1970, joining The Age as a cadet journalist. In 1997 he became editor and in 2003 editor-in-chief. During this time he became the subject of controversy when he rejected a Michael Leunig cartoon which compared the view that peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be achieved through military means with the Nazi slogan on the gates of Auschwitz, "Arbeit macht frei" (Work makes you free). He said that "I think it’s just inappropriate. Anyone seeing that cartoon would think it inappropriate."[2]
Gawenda has two children, Evie (1975-) and Chaskiel (1980-). Gawenda is the uncle of television producer and former senior football (soccer) player Harvey Silver. [1]
Maybe he's hoping Hillary will take out Obama and then his "woodenness" can come in and win. It's hard to get my head around this but it's not outside the realm of possibility.
I am willing to bet the Democrats heaved a sigh of relief long ago when the twice buried candidate uttered the immortal phrase, "You won't have Dick Nixon to kick around any more."
It says right here the Gore threat is quite real. About the only thing we have going for us is the support bordering on worship Gore engenders in Hollywood. I think a significant block of middle America finds Hollywood almost beneath contempt.
A lot of people like morons. They're so much easier to direct.
That's still one of the most disgusting PDAs that I've ever witnessed.
Ugh. As if we needed any more proof that Presidential politics is nothing but a beauty contest. As I recall, William H. Taft was a widebody.
LOL! It's either that or he's having a tough time holding in his carbon emissions.
Is this an expose of past dem scare tactics? The Club of Rome -- The Population Bomb -- Welfare mothers starving in the streets -- Old people eating dog food? Global Warming?
Is Gore dropping "sky's falling" tactics and writing a book about it? Is it true?
Is this an expose of past dem scare tactics? The Club of Rome -- The Population Bomb -- Welfare mothers starving in the streets -- Old people eating dog food? Global Warming?
Is Gore dropping "sky's falling" tactics and writing a book about it? Is it true?
It might be best for Hillary not to open the weight issues to all that much scrutiny. Apparently Wolfson Carville and the Forehead have not taken a hard look at her from behind, lately. They do not want to go there I think.
"What will doom him (Gore) in November 2008 his that, like John Kerry, he is far to the left of the average voter."
A few things have changed.
1. The 2006 elections reflect possible shifts, away from Republicans--who they may blame for Iraq misadventures.
2. Gore/Kerry didn't lose by much. Unlike any of the others, Gore was NOT in office during any of the 9/11/2001 or Iraq politics and wars. He will be free to adopt his position based on the latest situation, unharmed by previous votes, etc.
3. Bush is so unpopular he is of no help.
4. Probable lack of Republican unity, regardless of who their candidate is.
a. "True Conservative" threats to not support Rudy, John, Mitt or Newt for all the previously listed shortcomings.
b. Loss of centrist Republicans/Independents if GOP candidate is viewed as "Right Wing."
Bottom Line: 2008 is no cakewalk for the Republican Party (stupid party sometimes)
I personally dislike Al Gore. Yet I can see him emerging as a very strong candidate. Like Nixon in 1968. Maybe Gore will have a "secret plan" to end the muslim problems.
They obviously have not seen Hillary's lower half
How could you miss it.
Bill certainly doesn't want to go there...(snicker)
I thought this was gonna be an onion-like piece, but instead the guy really, really, likes Gore. Every ounce of him.
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