Gore Gore Gore
Joe Klein says that Gore’s speech inconvenienced the Democrats by forcing them to deal with an issue that doesn’t poll well for them, and that’s just too bad…
The unanimity of this conviction among consultants (and the willingness of commentators to buy into it) should give us pause. It is especially noxious because the issues the consultants want Democrats to run on — pandering to the elderly, demagoguing on entitlements, and blaming George W. Bush for the business cycle — are minuscule when compared to the decisions about to be taken by the Bush administration. This is not merely about Iraq: The White House is proposing a radical new military and diplomatic doctrine for the United States — the right to intervene, unilaterally and pre-emptively, whenever we see fit. This has actually been put into writing, into words so simple, the president has said, that “the boys in Lubbock can understand it.”
And the Democrats don’t want to talk about it? What can one say about such monumental fecklessness? Perhaps this: Any local candidate who refuses to address, in detail, these essential issues of war and peace is trying to distract the public from the most important national discussion since the end of the Cold War and therefore deserves to lose.
…
Al Gore’s speech was a good start. And more, it was a gauntlet wisely thrown. Those politicians — Democrat and Republican — who neglect these crucial issues now, for whatever reasons, should be taken at face value: Apparently, they have nothing of interest to say. We should remember their silence the next time they ask for our votes.
Couldn’t agree with him more.
I think this has been my main criticism of the Democratic leadership for some time - their silence when a response is desperately needed. They were awfully quiet about Florida, too, when anyone who believes in democracy should have been screaming at the suggestion that there was something wrong with counting the ballots. They have just been too damn quiet when it was time to speak up.
Mind, that’s better than the opposition, which shamelessly lies. But not enough better.
Comment by Avedon | 9/28/2002