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Doug from Upland interviews JAYNA DAVIS discussing the OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING
Posted on 12/05/2002 4:45:27 AM PST by kattracks
Is Al Gore destined to be the Adlai Stevenson of our age? Stevenson, who also came from a political family (his grandfather was Grover Cleveland's vice president), won the Democratic presidential nomination in 1952 and 1956 and both times was defeated by Dwight Eisenhower. Stevenson was considered an intellectual - an egghead in the jargon of the day - witty and erudite. Ike, on the other hand, was a clumsy speaker, a syntax mangler who supposedly thought no great thoughts. He won both times in a walk.If my reference to Eisenhower brings President Bush to mind, it is supposed to. The two are hardly the same, of course. Ike was a war hero who, for most of his career, so obfuscated his political leanings that both Democrats and Republicans wanted him to be their candidate. And when he did run for the White House, he did not eke out a victory - no hanging chads for him - but neatly trounced Stevenson. America really liked Ike.
Democrats were perplexed. To them, Ike was a bumbler, and something of a political coward as well. He had refused to publicly rebuke Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Ike was slow to bring what was then called the moral suasion of the White House down on the side of the nascent civil rights struggle. And he appeared to be so detached from the workings of the White House that sometimes he seemed ignorant of what was going on.
But what really mystified many Stevenson fans was how the country did not appreciate that their man was brilliant and Ike a fool. These people judged both men by the way they spoke, clarity of thought, just the right reference to something from the classics. Stevenson could do that; Ike could not. The cartoonists had a field day.
If anything, Bush is sometimes characterized as even more of a cartoon figure - a man of such mangled syntax, he makes Ike seem downright Shakespearean. And yet, as Bob Woodward shows us in his new book, "Bush at War," Bush had what it took to lead his contentious war cabinet and, much more important, the nation in the aftermath of 9/11. His performance has not been without glitches, but he has won the confidence of the American people.
And yet in certain Democratic circles, the caricature of Bush as a fool clings with great tenacity. But as some of us learned in high school, verbal agility ain't everything. No one would deny that Gore has it, and yet presidentially speaking, he doesn't get the girl. Just recently, for instance, The New York Times found in a poll that Gore was rated favorably by only 19% of respondents - and unfavorably by 43%, and this after he had completed a book promotion tour in which, it seemed, he appeared everywhere except on Al Jazeera.
Gore is considering whether to run for President again. If he does, he will be the presumptive front-runner, the candidate with the greatest name recognition, if not the greatest claim on the nomination: He actually won the popular vote last time out. Still, now is not then, and the Bush of the campaign is not the Bush in the White House.
More and more, Bush is looking like Ike. And more and more, Gore is looking like Stevenson.
Cohen is pathetic. He sounds like he might be waking up to Bush's abilities but he still worships Clinton-Gore. Gore has verbal agility? Lockbox, Dingell-Norwood, Sigh, Sigh, Sigh? Gore is a condescending bore -- and with poor manners to boot.
I also like Cohen's little sentence, in the midst of comparing Ike to Bush: "America really liked Ike." And Bush? With poll numbers far greater than anything a Democrat has ever posted, could he say that America really likes Bush? Nah, that would still stick in Cohen's craw.
Cohen's characterization of Stevenson is reasonably accurate.
But that Cohen should consider Algore as analogous to Stevenson is an apt demonstration of how far our standards have fallen...
Oh please. I hereby deny that Gore has verbal agility. So someone would and does deny it! You don't have to listen to him very long to figure that out. He doesn't have mental agility either.
All Gore is is a big loser with an inflated sense of entitlement.
But it's interesting that the liberal whiner Richard Cohen is writing this Goofus-and-Gallant tribute to Bush, left handed though it is. That shows how far buried Gore is.
On NOW at RadioFR!
Doug from Upland interviews JAYNA DAVIS discussing the OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING
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