In a way, I feel sorry for Al Gore. I can’t imagine how emasculating losing a close election might be. His op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times doesn’t help matters.
In his article (reg. req.), “How to Debate George Bush”, Gore offers no debating techniques. It’s just more of the same, boring, quagmire-in-Iraq stuff you hear John “Orange Glow” Kerry mumbling about everyday.
Gore’s party has relegated him to the sidelines. Not having any real role in the Kerry campaign, he’s reduced to writing (or dictating) op-eds like this one. He begins by commenting on the “dominance of attack advertisements” and media spin. He says Bush is a “skilled debater” but that his campaign has made “lowering expectations” an art form, whatever that means.
According to Gore, Bush’s presidency has been a “catastrophic failure.” And here is where my pity for him comes in. This one-time vice-president, reduced to playing attack dog for the Kerry campaign, is not a very good attack dog. Like all politicians, he watches polls and understands Americans are very concerned about Iraq, but as a good poll watcher, he knows that people don’t like John Kerry. How do you work with this kind of material?
Well, as any good Democrat does, he tows the “false premises” line about the war and advises Kerry to remind taxpayers that taxes are high. OK. So instead of telling us how Kerry plans to protect us from terrorists, he’s playing the broken class envy record. Prescription drugs, higher taxes for the “rich” and the environment. That’s all they’ve got. How does this help Kerry in a debate?
Poor Al even quotes a comedian, Jon Stewart of the “Daily Show”, in an op-ed purportedly written to bolster John Kerry. As I said: pitiful.
Gore closes with this:
The biggest single difference between the debates this year and four years ago is that President Bush cannot simply make promises. He has a record. And I hope that voters will recall the last time Mr. Bush stood on stage for a presidential debate. If elected, he said, he would support allowing Americans to buy prescription drugs from Canada. He promised that his tax cuts would create millions of new jobs. He vowed to end partisan bickering in Washington. Above all, he pledged that if he put American troops into combat: “The force must be strong enough so that the mission can be accomplished. And the exit strategy needs to be well defined.”
So without telling us what Kerry stands for or what he’ll do for us or even how to debate George Bush, he attacks the president’s record, which is fair game. In his piece of published advice, all we’ve learned is that Al Gore needs a real job.
Gore could’ve mentioned Kerry’s Senate record. By the way, what did Kerry do in the Senate all those years? Beats me. And Gore.
A liberal acquaintance of mine once remarked about the “Republican attack ads” and how distracting they were to Kerry’s campaign.
I said, “All Kerry talks about are his four months in Vietnam. What about his 20+ years in the Senate?”
He said something like, “Well, he wants to talk about other issues, but he’s too busy defending himself from the attacks!”
“What exactly are his other issues? What did he do in the Senate?” My acquaintance mumbled something about the environment.
The point is that Democrats know John Kerry is not well-liked by his own “supporters”, and Al Gore’s fluff piece is just another attack on Bush while doing absolutely nothing to bolster Kerry. That’s how they have to play it.
Liberals have little choice but to paint George Bush as a cunningly skilled but “lowered expectations” debater (?). Gore writes: “The debate tomorrow should not seek to discover which candidate would be more fun to have a beer with.”
As I said: pitiful.
******
Pre-debate rumblings in the blogosphere: Read Michelle Malkin’s post, which links to her latest column.
More about Dems’ apathy for Kerry from Power Line.
Semi-related: More original reporting from INDC Journal. More flip-flop reminders from Blogs For Bush.
A pre-debate debate is going on at Blogcritics.
Debate advice for Kerry at Power Line.
