Gore's Y2K Election Strategies
By Sara McPeak
jemcpeak@mc.net
January 1999
News Flash:
Gore
Makes It Official: He'll Run in 2000
Although no official announcement has been made, Al Gore is making plans
to run for President in the year 2000. Following are some of the
strategies and theories that he has chosen to exemplify his campaign in
preparation for that run. We can only hope that Gore's errors in
judgment will jump out and grab the attention of the American
electorate.
--Loyalty Above All Else--
Al Gore has changed his strategy regarding the White House under fire.
This is obvious in his recent strong defense of the chief executive
under what he terms partisanship attack from the House. In August, when
Clinton was admitting that he misled the nation, Gore was vacationing in
Hawaii. In broad contrast during December, as the impeachment snowball
grew, so did Gore's efforts to support Clinton in open statements to the
press and inpersonal appeals to individuals.
Gore has obviously chosen to be loyal above all else.
Loyalty is just one of the traits he hopes will enhance his image as a
straight shooter if he is to have any hopes for a Y2K presidential bid.
But how can blind loyalty make any sense in the roller coaster
political, moral and legal upheaval surrounding Clinton?
The one constant in this confusion is the certainty that Clinton lied
under oath. No one has been able to refute that fact. The House of
Representatives impeached Clinton based on that fact; and yet Clinton
refuses to acknowledge that fact in the face of the dramatic irony that
the country knows the truth.
Certainly the blind loyalty of Al Gore for his President ignores the
fact of perjury and the interpretation of this kind of loyalty can only
be that it is contemplated for political gain. Is democratic
partisanship more palatable than republican partisanship? Yes, it is, if
you are a loyal democrat. But no matter how loyal Al Gore is to his
President, nothing can change the truth. Aligning with President
Clinton is akin to defeatism.
--Fighting Foreign Government Corruption--
The Malaysian incident discussed in our December Gore Watch was an
attempt by Al Gore to expose government corruption in a foreign land and
to take up the cause of protesters wanting to overthrow a corrupt
foreign government. Because of the Clinton administration's lack of a
definite and strong foreign policy, no backdrop was in place which might
have prepared the way
for a more sensitive policy speech in Malaysia. And so Gore's direct
approach failed and this became an international incident. Evidently,
that fiasco was just a prerequisite to a continuing pursuit of
identifying foreign country human rights violations and crooked
politicians in foreign
lands as Gore now has new plans on the horizon to host international
talks on fighting government corruption.
In a December 7, 1998, Wall Street Journal article, Gore's past
associations were mentioned as possible deterrents to his accountability
in the area of routing government
corruption:
"...the issue has its political risks for the vice president. One
problem is that anyone who declares holy war on corruption risks being
labeled holier than thou. In Mr. Gore's case there are two specific
problems: One is his close relationship to former Russian prime
Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, who has been linked to the dark elements
in the Russian oligarchy. The
other is the continuing U.S. campaign-finance controversies. Election
funding-related corruption currently isn't on the conference agenda."
And what about the corruption at home? Our own President will possibly
be tried by our Senate next month on impeachment charges of lying under
oath and obstructing justice, for heavens sake! Shouldn't our government
rid our own institutions of such violators before we attack the global
corruption zones?
--Practical Idealism--
Practical idealism is the Y2K theme which Vice President Al Gore has
suggested for his all-but-declared presidential election bid. It was
coined in response to rival Gov. George Bush's theme of compassionate
conservatism.
Practical idealism conjures in one's mind abstract philosophical ideas
which should be discussed and weighed against values, morals and mores.
But Mr. Gore explained his practical idealism as "navigating between
political poles of the past -- labor versus management -- and rejecting
false choices like that between protecting the environment and fostering
development."
It sounds to me like practical idealism is not a route to truism but yet
just another political cover-up in order to appear to be accepting both
sides of an issue.
Perhaps Al Gore should apply his practical idealism in the matter of his
incessant predictions of global warming. Ignoring the practical sphere
of his theme, Gore refuses to recognize scientific research reports
which contradict his ecoalarmist forecasts. In the November 2nd issue of
Insight on the News", it was stated:
"Al's worldview enthusiastically is shared by Dick Forrister, a
rock-hard Gore man who heads the White House Office of Global Climate
Change. Recently he told a Washington meeting of the prestigious Energy
Institute that critics who disagree with the official view of global
warming are clowns... NASA scientist James Hansen recently has argued
that the reason dramatic warming didn't show up as he had forecast was
because the soil and vegetation are absorbing carbon dioxide at an
increasing rate. That makes the planet greener, not browner. Accounting
for Hansen's work published in the Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences, this lowers 21st-century warming to about 1.25 degrees.
Forrister called this frivolous as well."
How can Gore suggest such a lofty sounding theme as practical idealism
to the electorate and coincidentally expect us to accept the idea that
scientific investigation (especially that done by scientists funded by
the U.S. government), if it disagrees with Al Gore, is simply frivolous
and those conducting it are clowns? Facing such a constant flow of
contradictions of his global warming concerns, Gore must simply accept
the practical fact that he is wrong.
Editor's Note: In an interesting sidenote that Sara's too modest to
mention, she and NASA scientist James Hansen went to high school
together in the 1950s. James Hansen was salutatorian of their class, and
guess who was valedictorian? You guessed it! Our own Sara McPeak,
Rightgrrl! Gore Watch expert and extraordinary refuter of bogus
environmental claims. :)
This article copyright © 1998 by Sara McPeak, and may
not be reproduced in any form without the express written consent of its
author. All rights reserved.
Algor(e)ithms!