Hero of the Week
Al Gore's decision not to seek the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination shows selflessness and class that we would never see from the current "president."
This is the first time (and probably will be the last time) that I have named the same person both Hero of the Week and Asshole of the Week.
On Nov. 22, when I named Al Gore Asshole of the Week for looking very much like a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, I wrote:
... I never tire of repeating the fact that Gore won the popular vote in 2000 by more than 500,000 votes. But even with the fiasco in Florida, Gore should have beaten Bush to the point that the Republicans could not have manufactured their "win" in Florida. On the heels of a good economy and a popular two-term president, Gore should have won an indisputable victory over Bush.
But Gore ran a lackluster campaign in 2000 and he sat on his hands while Team Bush stole the White House from under him by claiming that Bush won Florida.
Now Gore asks us to believe that he's changed, that he would be a more personable, more assertive candidate. Can we take that chance?
The Democratic National Committee, the governing body of the national Democratic Party that has about 450 members, doesn't think so. The Associated Press reported this past week that "only 35 percent of the DNC members polled for The Los Angeles Times said Gore should run again, while 48 percent said he should not and 17 percent were undecided."
Gore should take the hint and step aside. Although he won the 2000 presidential election, the majority of citizens of the United States of Amnesia, as Gore Vidal calls us, view Bush as the legitimate president. Right or wrong, they view Gore as the loser of the 2000 election.
The Democrats need a stronger candidate than that in 2004.
It's as though Al reads my weblog, because yesterday he announced on "60 Minutes" that he will not seek the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination.
"Well, I personally have the energy and the drive and the ambition to make another campaign," Gore said on "60 Minutes." "But I don't think it's the right thing for me to do. I think that a ... rematch between myself and President Bush would inevitably involve a focus on the past that would, in some measure, distract from the focus on the future that I think all campaigns have to be about."
"The [2000] campaign was an extremely difficult one," Gore said, "and while I have the energy and drive to go out there and do it again, I think that there are a lot of people within the Democratic Party who felt exhausted by that, who felt like, 'OK, I don't want to go through that again.' And I'm frankly sensitive to that feeling."
Gore said he probably won't have another opportunity to run for president, but I wouldn't count him out in 2008 or thereafter.
The Associated Press noted that "Gore won the presidential popular vote by a half-million votes in 2000 but conceded to Republican George Bush after a tumultuous 36-day recount in Florida and a 5-4 Supreme Court vote against him.
"Party activists were critical of Gore for losing despite a booming economy and eight years of a Democratic administration. Gore even lost his home state of Tennessee; a victory there would have given him the White House."
Still, I think that history will be kind to Gore -- and will record that George W. coveted the White House so much that it was irrelevant to him that he lost the 2000 presidential election by more than 500,000 votes.
Gore's decision not to run in 2004 -- despite the fact that polls had put him far ahead of his Democratic rivals -- demonstrates decency and character rarely seen in our politicians. He is my Hero of the Week.
6:08:22 PM 
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