A quantum of umbrage: Most. Ghastly. Beltway. Rumor. Ever.

On the buzz about who might replace Janet Napolitano as head of Homeland Security:

In the political world, former Senator Joe Lieberman is also a rumored possibility to take the job, in part because he could help make a possibly contentious Senate confirmation process a bit easier

Okay, I realize that it's the job of rumor mongers to . . . you know, monger rumors. But:

If Obama puts Lieberman – the same Lieberman who was the first Democrat [sic] to step into the well of the Senate and board the Clinton penis train, the same Lieberman who would have been gloriously unknown outside his home state had not Al Gore decided to run for president in 2000 by running away from Clinton (thus giving Holy Joe an undeserved elevation to national prominence for which Gore has yet to atone, thirteen years later), the same Lieberman who never missed a chance to go on the Sunday talk shows and threaten to derail whatever consensus his party had struggled to achieve in the previous week, the same Lieberman who never saw a chance for getting America into another war that didn't make him tingle all up and down his thighs – up for DHS head, it will confirm my steadily-increasing conviction that Obama doesn't see his job as fixing what's wrong with America, but rather as presiding over and softening the blow of our growing national awareness that we can't have nice things anymore.

See also: No More Mister Nice Blog.

The unforgiving minute: A net gain in intelligence for think tanks on both the right and the left

An old joke, sure, but no one here apologizes for digging deep into the classics when something like this happens, as it was inevitably bound to do:

Former Sen. Joe Lieberman is joining the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, the organization announced Monday.

Lieberman — Al Gore’s vice presidential running mate in 2000 and a Democratic presidential candidate in 2004 — will co-chair AEI’s American Internationalism Project, an effort to rebuild a bipartisan consensus about big foreign policy questions.

Ah, yes. Droopy Joe Lieberman, former Democratic Senator who was completely unelectable in the Nutmeg State without the strong support of Republicans, a man whose idea of <airquotes>bipartisanship</airquotes> is to hear the latest Democratic initiative and then rush to the nearest microphone to sell it out.

And just as inevitably, it would be Politico that would break the news, wouldn't it?

To take liberties with another old political joke, it'll be interesting to see how much conservatives like Lieberman now that he's inside the tent pissing in.

As much as I've admired Al Gore's post-2000 work, he still must atone for elevating this little weasel to national notice.

Minute's up.

Quote of the day: On elections and consequences

Here's Steve at No More Mister Nice Blog on the right and that whole democracy thing:

At the national level, this is the third presidency in a row that the right has approached on the assumption that elections should be only incidentally related to consequences.

Quote of the day: Recalling past slights

Bob Somerby on the liberal commentariat's blind spot:

A new liberal world began to emerge in the aftermath of Iraq. Unfortunately, this new liberal world has largely agreed to pretend that history began in the year 2003, when its own eyes opened. Conservatives love to recall past slights from the media—including "slights” which are non-existent. On our side, we prefer to pretend that the deeply consequential press corps misconduct of the Clinton-Gore era simply never occurred.

Sandra Day O'Connor is "a little bit disappointed" today

How sad for her.

From USA Today:

O'Connor, appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1981, was a moderate conservative who often brokered compromises among justices and across ideological lines.

Since she retired in 2006, the court has become more conservative and retreated from some rulings in which she crafted consensus, including on abortion rights, campaign finance and government race-based policies.

The truly heart-wrenching part:

Asked how she felt about the fact that the current court had undone some of her rulings, the nation's first woman justice responded, "What would you feel? I'd be a little bit disappointed. If you think you've been helpful, and then it's dismantled, you think, 'Oh, dear.' But life goes on.

Yes, life does go on for brave little Sandra. And the important thing here is that she got her wish: She got to retire during a Republican presidential administration.

In fact, she made certain of it.

Odd that she doesn't mention her swing vote on Bush v Gore as one of her moments of helpfulness.

Fair is fair: Al Gore at the DNC

I got a ridiculously high bump in web traffic last week because people were seeking information on Al Gore's upcoming speech at the Democratic National Convention Thursday night. For about three days, the top-ranked result of a Google search for "al gore democratic convention" was, of all things, this bagatelle from February, when the topic du jour was superdelegates.

I won't deny that post had a moment or two, but honestly--superdelegates? Remember when we cared about that?

So, after sucking up a lot of barely deserved traffic because of it, p3 proudly presents Gore's convention speech, without commercial interruption or editorial second-guessing.

p.s.: Al, the offer still stands: You're still welcome join us at Drinking Liberally the next time you're in town. Check your calendar--we'll work with you.

Memo to Gore: A truly dreadful idea

Telegraph (UK) headline: Senior Democrats mull Al Gore's nomination.

This is a truly dreadful idea. "Senior figures and aides to the former vice-president" clearly have more free time than good sense.

Apart from all the obvious reasons he shouldn't touch this with a ten-foot pole (who really wants to see MoDo party like it's 1999 again?), there's this:

If Gore throws in for the nomination and the general election, his signature issue--global warming--will be ten times the political football it already is. And frankly, I think he can do more for his cause outside of government than inside--the next president will have both Iraq and our imploding economy, plus health care reform, to deal with 24/7 (or, in the event of a Republican victory, to ignore and deny 24/7, which would be at least as much work). Becoming POTUS would mean a net reduction in Gore's ability to work for global warming change.

Memo to the League of Tub-Thumpers for Gore: Let him keep focused where he can do the most good. Let him play his superdelegate role--with Bill Clinton all-in for Hillary's presidential campaign, Gore is emerging as the de facto leader of the Democratic Party anyway--and then get back to his environmental evangelism.

Nader's nadir

Bob Herbert is in a generous mood today; perhaps cutting Ralph Nader some slack because it's the latter's birthday, he attributes Nader's insistence on making a public embarrassment of himself late in life to the example set by his father.

Maybe he can’t help himself. If William Manchester is to be believed, Ralph Nader got a fair amount of his exasperating, nonstop, take-no-prisoners-style of proselytizing from his father, Nathra, who owned a restaurant and bakery in the factory town of Winsted, Conn.

The customers, wrote Manchester in his popular history, “The Glory and the Dream,” complained that Nathra would not let them eat their pastries in peace. He was always “lecturing them about the wrongs, the inequities, the injustices of the system.”

It seems Nathra didn’t know when to stop. And neither does Ralph. As he told me Monday: “I’m my father’s son.”

The blame for Nader's recent announcement that he's running for president yet again seems like an unfairly large burden to lay on the elder Nader.

The good Nader did for his country in the 20th Century will be remembered longer than his poor performance in the 21st although, sadly or not, his name may spark fewer and fewer associations with such achievements. He himself might well be remembered more for his self-aggrandizing presidential runs than for his decisive role in transforming consumer protection and citizens' rights in America, from seat-belt laws and other auto safety regulations to combating nuclear power to establishing OSHA, FOIA, and PIRG.

Nader dismisses the idea that he would function as a spoiler in 2008, and he's right--though not because the election will be a blowout for Democrats, but because the infinitesimal percentage he'll draw this year couldn't tip an election for Pervez Musharraf.

Even most members of the Green Party are unlikely to pull his finger this time.

Yes, Nader will use his candidacy to speak about issues of ballot access, corporate crime, health care, administration high crimes and misdemeanors, poverty, and more. All worthy causes. All addressed to an audience that his antics have rendered increasingly small and detached. None of these causes will be helped a whit by being attached to one of the most radioactive figures in left politics. Congratulations.

It's true that he won't get to talk about ballot access on "Meet the Press" if he isn't signed on for another mad run. But is that really the only way Nader can think of to advance a cause? He used to know others.

Al Gore--You remember him? The fellow whose 2000 candidacy Nader said was separated from Bush's only by irrelevant differences? That one?--spent the last 8 years in a nearly single-handed effort to move global climate change onto the public agenda. And he did it very specifically and pointedly without running for office, wisely recognizing that such a run would inevitably draw the focus to him, not to his cause. For Nader, that seems to be the whole point.

Today is Nader's 74th birthday. He would do well to use the occasion to reflect on what he's accomplished in the last eight years, and what he could accomplish in the next eight--and how these vanity campaigns are working against any such possible accomplishments.

Al Gore: Peace-keeper at Democratic convention?

The NYTimes has the story that Gore, a superdelegate a the Democratic National Convention in August, will keep his powder dry--he won't be endorsing either candidate in case he needs to step in to keep a brokered convention from crippling the party and the campaign.

Democratic Party officials said that in the past week Mr. Gore and other leading Democrats had held private talks as worry mounted that the close race between Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton could be decided by a group of 796 party insiders known as superdelegates.

The signs that party elders are weighing whether and how to intervene reflects the extraordinary nature of the contest now and the concern among some Democrats that they not risk an internal battle that could harm the party in the general election. […]

Few figures are being more closely watched by Democratic insiders than Mr. Gore, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who associates say has been lobbied hard for an endorsement by allies of Mrs. Clinton and of Mr. Obama.[…]

Although Mr. Gore has expressed concerns to some associates about the damage a brokered convention could cause, several associates said he was hopeful that one candidate would soon break through, sparing the party such an outcome. He told a close friend recently that his decision not to endorse "feels like the right thing" and that he remained optimistic the race "is going to tip at some point," the friend said.

Another close ally of Mr. Gore's, however, said: "He recognizes the need for a few party elders to stay on the sidelines to ensure, if needed, that the process is fair and honest. It could very likely take a group of senior party people, including Gore, to settle this, but the only way they can settle it is if they stay on the sidelines now."[…]

Party leaders described Mr. Gore as a potentially crucial mediator because the putative head of the party - and the man who chose him as his vice president - Bill Clinton, is hardly a neutral observer when it comes to his wife's candidacy.

(At right, an artist's depiction of Al Gore brokering the presidential nomination between candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in August.

One source close to the former Vice President has quoted him as saying, "You wanna be tough, better do what you can," adding, "No one wants to be defeated.")

Al Gore wins Nobel Peace price for efforts against global warming: Let the swiftboating of the Nobel selection committee begin!

Actually, it's already begun.

Also, for anyone who still thinks that Gore will be jumping into the presidential race to complete the Oscar/Nobel Prize/Presidency trifecta--and so far, only the hardest of hard-core Gore loyalists and the right-wing Hillary-hating blogosphere talk much about that, which ought to tell you something--wait until early next week, and then Google these terms:

Al Gore + Love Canal
Al Gore + Love Story
Al Gore + Invented Internet
Al Gore + Earth Tones

And watch how often the hits will appear not just at Free Republic or Pajamas Media or Drudge Report, or on O'Reilly or Limbaugh--where you'd naturally expect to find them--but in the broadcast news, and in the NYTimes and the Washington Post.

Once again, the only difference will be that, when Limbaugh says "don't forget Al Gore claimed he invented the Internet," the Post will say "Al Gore, whose 2000 presidential campaign was dogged by stories that he'd claimed to have invented the Internet…" If you say the smear, that's bad; but if you repeat the smear without correcting it, it's journalism, and that's good.

Prize or no prize, it would be astonishing beyond the power of words to describe if Gore entered the 2008 race, knowing he'd get five pieces of this kind of "coverage" for every one piece that actually focused on any issues he attempted to raise.

Rehashing the 1990s, because the alternative is to take responsibility for them

Bob Somerby has a good reminder of why Al Gore would have to be crazy to ever run for president again.

The dishonest trashing of him by the mainstream punditocracy (not FOX News or Limbaugh or the National Review, where it would be expected; I'm talking about the Times, the Post, the broadcast networks, and the rest of the respectable sources) would pick up in mid-sentence where it left off a few years ago. The zombie lies--you kill them, and a few minutes later they get back up and walk the earth again--would continue unabated.

Case in point, Times columnist Frank Rich. I've featured Rich approvingly several times in the last three years here at p3 because he's written some good stuff about the legal, political, and moral excesses of the Bush administration. But when it comes to facing candidly how Bush got where he is in the first place, Rich (as Somerby might say) whistles quietly to himself and looks at the ceiling.

It's not that Rich is a Republican (I have know way of knowing but if I had to guess I'd guess he isn't); and his equally complicit Timester Dowd seems largely beyond the reach of party identity. Anyway, this isn't about Republican versus Democrat (although it creates an advantage for Republicans that they've not failed to take advantage of); it's about the Opinion Elite versus whomever they find it amusing to disrespect, but especially Gore, and especially then in his role as putative stand-in for the ever-hated Clintons.

Somerby writes:

And of course, the nation’s pundits were calling Gore every name in the book as he trailed Bush in 1999—and were inventing a series of “lies” he had supposedly uttered. Of all people, Rich should remember that history well; after all, he had invented the first of these “lies,” the Love Story nonsense, in December 1997. In March 1999, Rich’s colleagues dragged out his old counter-factual slander, and they hounded Gore with the ludicrous tale all through the 2000 campaign. They added “invented the Internet” and “discovered Love Canal”—and in the process, they invented Bush’s route to the White House. And yes: This all began with Rich’s dissembling in 1997, a fact this pompous and stupid man has somehow forgotten. Again.

But then, has anyone ever dissembled as much on any subject as Rich dissembles on the subject of Gore? In the passage we quote above, Rich seems to applaud “the firebrand who emerged from defeat, speaking up early against the Iraq war and leading the international charge on global warming.” But this is all reinvention. What happened in the fall of 2002, when Gore spoke up against Iraq? Of course! As always, Rich trashed him as a fake and a phony! Rich essentially lied about what Gore had said on the Today show, and he insisted that Gore was just saying these things because he wanted to run for the White House again (links below). “[O]f course he is still running for president,” the pompous scribe all-knowingly wrote; he added this, with astounding condescension: “[W]hat else does the guy, a political lifer, have to do with himself?” But Gore didn’t run for president again; instead, he found something else to do with himself, becoming the firebrand who helped change the world’s discourse on global warming. And what happened in the spring of 2006, when Gore’s firebrand film first appeared? Of course! As always, Rich trashed him as a fake and a phony! Rich mocked Gore’s film from stem to stern—and, as always, he brilliantly knew that Gore was just running for president again.

Read the whole thing. You might be amazed--and appalled--at the things you've forgotten about the 2000 campaign. A daily parade of fresh outrages can do that to a person. (But Somerby never forgets.)

I could be wrong, but I don't think I am: We've seen the last Al Gore presidential campaign, in large part because he knows perfectly well that this dishonest twaddle is what he would get, instead of even vaguely serious coverage of his campaign issues.

And if you wonder why the zombie lies about Gore persist--and why Edwards's haircuts are continuing news but his health care plan isn't, or why Hillary's preferred baseball team is of urgent importance but not her position on taxes--here you have it. The Insiders create the story, perpetuate it, then insist the candidate respond to it on the high-minded grounds that people are asking about it.

The Independent Harold Stassen

If Ralph Nader had picked up the phone in early October 2000 and told Al Gore that he'd accept an appointment as head of the Federal Trade Commission in exchange for directing his supporters to vote for Gore, Al would be winding up his second term, continued UN inspections, international sanctions, and the enforcement of the no-fly zone would have continued to hold Saddam Hussein's regime on the ropes, North Korea wouldn't have successfully tested nuclear weapons, America would be leading the world in finding alternatives to a totally oil-based economy instead of occupying Iraq and threatening Iran, the hollowed-out US economy wouldn't be a poison pill for our grandchildren, and Nader himself would be remembered as a saint.

Instead he'll be remembered, I'm a little sad to say, as a joke.

That's a pity, since Nader was an important progressive voice for over a generation. He built the consumer movement in America from scratch. But I don't think even the Greens are foolish enough to cross the street for his presidential bid this time.

He can't raise significant money, he has no organization to get him on the state ballots, any endorsements he get will be from fellow neverwozzers, and I have a better shot of being in the televised debates than he does. All he'll be able to do (not counting the obligatory David Barsamian interview on alternative radio) is jump up and down on the curb and shout "Hey! Over here! Look at me!" while the parade passes him by--and then hope Lyndon LaRouche will split cab fare home.

Everyone has their special moment when they gave up on Ralph. For some, it was 40 years ago. For me, it was October 2000 when he stuck to his idiotic "Bush and Gore are the same" shtick instead of telling his followers to vote for Gore. Incredibly, he's still saying that today.

Yes, yes, we get your point, Ralph--neither the Dems nor the Repubs are as open to new ideas as we'd want; they're both in the hands of the same money men and advisors pedaling their threadbare strategies from the last century; they're slaves to the same palace-insider Beltway Media opinions; and so on and so on. And that was/is true and deserved to be said. (And, frankly, the blogosphere has been saying so just fine without much help from you for several years now.) But to say there's no difference between the two parties--that there's literally no difference, that it doesn't matter which one wins--is just plain idiotic.

No, it's so far beyond idiotic that the light rays from idiotic will take thousands of years to reach him.

Let me hang onto some tiny shred of the respect I used to have for you, Ralph. Drop this presidential campaign idea. Drop it now.

(Tip of the UL-approved safety helmet to Doctor Beyond, who suggested the title.)

"The rule of reason is the natural sovereign of a free people"

Can it be that 32% of Americans work for Haliburton, or are Bush Pioneers waiting for the regulatory relief they paid for in 2004?

Not much other way to explain that Bush continues to cling to even that embarrassingly slim base of support.

I hate to be an intellectual snob--actually, in this case it's more like being a "sentience snob," isn't it?--but it's hard to believe there many people left out there, other than those die-hards, who think the last 7 years wouldn't have gone better if the fellow who said

"The rule of reason is the natural sovereign of a free people"

had been in the White House instead of the fellow who said,

"My job is a job to make decisions. I'm a decision -- if the job description were, what do you do -- it's decision maker."

If you, like me, would appreciate a little more of the former and a good deal less of the latter, treat yourself to this this excerpt from Al Gore's new book, The Assault on Reason:

In order to reclaim our birthright, we Americans must resolve to repair the systemic decay of the public forum. We must create new ways to engage in a genuine and not manipulative conversation about our future. We must stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo-studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public's ability to discern the truth. Americans in both parties should insist on the re-establishment of respect for the rule of reason. […]

Many young Americans now seem to feel that the jury is out on whether American democracy actually works or not. We have created a wealthy society with tens of millions of talented, resourceful individuals who play virtually no role whatsoever as citizens. Bringing these people in—with their networks of influence, their knowledge, and their resources—is the key to creating the capacity for shared intelligence that we need to solve our problems.

Unfortunately, the legacy of the 20th century's ideologically driven bloodbaths has included a new cynicism about reason itself—because reason was so easily used by propagandists to disguise their impulse to power by cloaking it in clever and seductive intellectual formulations. When people don't have an opportunity to interact on equal terms and test the validity of what they're being "taught" in the light of their own experience and robust, shared dialogue, they naturally begin to resist the assumption that the experts know best.

So the remedy for what ails our democracy is not simply better education (as important as that is) or civic education (as important as that can be), but the re-establishment of a genuine democratic discourse in which individuals can participate in a meaningful way—a conversation of democracy in which meritorious ideas and opinions from individuals do, in fact, evoke a meaningful response.

Fortunately, the Internet has the potential to revitalize the role played by the people in our constitutional framework. It has extremely low entry barriers for individuals. It is the most interactive medium in history and the one with the greatest potential for connecting individuals to one another and to a universe of knowledge. It's a platform for pursuing the truth, and the decentralized creation and distribution of ideas, in the same way that markets are a decentralized mechanism for the creation and distribution of goods and services. It's a platform, in other words, for reason. But the Internet must be developed and protected, in the same way we develop and protect markets—through the establishment of fair rules of engagement and the exercise of the rule of law. The same ferocity that our Founders devoted to protect the freedom and independence of the press is now appropriate for our defense of the freedom of the Internet. The stakes are the same: the survival of our Republic. We must ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible to all citizens without any limitation on the ability of individuals to choose the content they wish regardless of the Internet service provider they use to connect to the Web. We cannot take this future for granted. We must be prepared to fight for it, because of the threat of corporate consolidation and control over the Internet marketplace of ideas.

The danger arises because there is, in most markets, a very small number of broadband network operators. These operators have the structural capacity to determine the way in which information is transmitted over the Internet and the speed with which it is delivered. And the present Internet network operators—principally large telephone and cable companies—have an economic incentive to extend their control over the physical infrastructure of the network to leverage control of Internet content. If they went about it in the wrong way, these companies could institute changes that have the effect of limiting the free flow of information over the Internet in a number of troubling ways.

The democratization of knowledge by the print medium brought the Enlightenment. Now, broadband interconnection is supporting decentralized processes that reinvigorate democracy. We can see it happening before our eyes: As a society, we are getting smarter. Networked democracy is taking hold. You can feel it.

The television-is-killing-reason argument--or at least its underpinnings--isn't that new, as anyone who's read Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death will recognize. Still, it's not a bad argument, and it's tied in the service of something Postman wasn't positioned to see coming: The struggle of the Internet to remain the newly discovered home of independent voices with a potentially global reach rather than the ultimate profit stream for the ever-shrinking pool of transnational corporate media owners. Let's see what Gore's book does to the conversation.

The excerpt is going onto the Readings list on the sidebar.

Meanwhile, if Gore has a new book coming out, you know what that means--we've got another shot at getting him to attend a Portland Drinking Liberally meeting when he goes on tour. A lot of members will want to hammer him about getting into the 2008 race, but personally I think a brewpub might be the ideal place to find out why they call her "Tipper."

The total-absence-of-blame game

See if you can detect the pattern here (read closely--it's tricky):

1. The problem, crisis, scandal, or disaster: Al Gore's constitutionally dubious defeat in the 2000 election, and the seven years of political and economic disasters that followed.

Who/what Maureen Dowd says is to blame: Some combination of the following: Gore himself, voting machines, Ralph Nader, Bob Shrum, Naomi Wolf, Bush, and/or Clinton.

Who/what is absolutely, positively not to blame: The elite media, conspicuously including Dowd herself, who spent most of 1990 and 2000 mocking and deriding Gore while giving Bush a free ride.


2. The problem, crisis, scandal, or disaster: Two years later, the 9th Ward in New Orleans is still largely in ruins, and has received little or no federal assistance.

Who/what Newt Gingrich says is to blame: The "failure of citizenship" on the part of residents "in the Ninth Ward, where 22,000 people were so uneducated and so unprepared, they literally couldn't get out of the way of a hurricane."

Who/what is absolutely, positively not to blame: The Bush administration, which took the efficient and effective FEMA organization left to it by Clinton and turned it into a repository for incompetent cronies, and starve-the-beast conservatives dating back to the "Gingrich Revolution."


3. The problem, crisis, scandal, or disaster: US military personnel getting horrifically bad care at Walter Reed Hospital.

Who/what Fox News anchor Brit Hume says is to blame: The perception that there is a scandal.

Who/what is absolutely, positively not to blame: The Bush administration, including Donald Rumsfeld and the string of administrators who've known about the problem for several years.

Things are not going to get much better around here as long as the national conversation continues to be dominated by deeply unserious and irresponsible people.

Why Al (probably) won't run

IWhile we're on the subject, I think Joe Conason's hit the nail precisely on the head:

Historians will someday ask why the United States entered a century of enormous challenges under the stewardship of a man who was so manifestly unsuited to high office -- and why he prevailed over a man whose judgment, experience and courage were so clearly superior. False images and phony stories created by the media will certainly figure in their answers.

Those historians may also wonder why the better man declined to seek the presidency again -- even after many of his detractors had been forced to confess that the rejection they helped engineer was a mistake of enormous proportions. They may wonder why he passed up the opportunity to redress the injustice done to him and done to his country and his planet, which is clearly of such great concern to him.

The answer may be found, of all places, in the Note, that snarky weblog on the ABC News site, which often betrays the true emotions roiling the minds of mainstream journalists. Said the Note, in explaining the recent spate of positive coverage of the old press nemesis: "Basically, the political press wants to tempt Al Gore into the race, and then they will destroy him as a flip-flopping, exaggerating, stiff loser. And Gore knows this."

Conason (and The Note) are certainly right about how the political press would behave if Gore announced his candidacy. The fact that Gore was right (a lonely position at the time) on two of the most important issues to face America, present and future--Iraq, and global warming--will be forgotten overnight. By the next morning, before you could say "dinner party at Sally Quinn's," they would be dragging it all up again: The Internet. Love Story. The Kiss. The Alpha Male. The Wardrobe. The Humorlessness. The Environment. The Beard. They would continue exactly--exactly!--where they left off in January 2001, without dropping a beat.

And note that we're not talking here about the GOP, the conservative media echo chamber, and Fox News, whose attacks are a given and will simply be part of business as usual. We're talking about the Times, the Post, the networks, CNN, MSNBC--all the respectable sources.

This time around, of course, they would distance themselves. They would not report, "Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet" (that would be so 1990s, darling!). Instead, they would report, "Al Gore, ridiculed by his opponents during his 2000 presidential bid as having claimed to have invented the Internet, announced his candidacy for president today."

See the difference? One is a hatchet job; the other is just good meat-and-potatoes journalism.

The only question is whether Gore knows it. I think he does--how could he not?--and has made his decision accordingly.

Our loss. Win or lose, a 2008 election season with Al Gore in it would probably be better for the country than the one we'll have without him.

Sorry, Mo--I'm just not that into you

I used to read Maureen Dowd regularly, but I quit when she went behind the Times Select pay-per firewall. Media Matters reminds me of what I haven't been missing:

In her February 28 column, titled "Ozone Man Sequel" (subscription required), New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd described former Vice President Al Gore as the "man who was prescient on climate change, the Internet, terrorism and Iraq," and wrote that "[i]t must be excruciating not only to lose a presidency you've won because the Supreme Court turned partisan and stopped the vote, but to then watch the madness of King George and Tricky Dick II as they misled their way into serial catastrophes." Dowd wondered who Gore must blame more for his defeat in the 2000 election: "Does he blame himself? Does he blame the voting machines? Ralph Nader? Robert Shrum? Naomi Wolf? How about Bush Inc. and Clinton Inc.?" Yet, as blogger Bob Somerby noted, Dowd omitted an obvious other potential target of blame: the media. Indeed, Dowd herself, while now praising Gore for being "prescient" on such issues, relentlessly mocked Gore during his 2000 presidential campaign and onward for what she described as Gore's "obsessions about global warming and the information highway."

Everyone's fault but Mo's. (Well, everyone but Mo and the Post's Richard Cohen.)

This is one of those articles that make me covet my neighbor's LexisNexis subscription. Apart from being an amateur philologist's dream, it makes it possible to document the patterns in media coverage that one can otherwise only suspect.

I remember once reading an appraisal of Dowd's work that made the point--striking to me at the time, although in hindsight I can't imagine why--that you could read her stuff indefinitely and never know what she was for. Plenty of indication of what she didn't like, but what about whatever she did stand for?

Ten years on at the Times editorial page and we don't have an answer, which suggests that perhaps we do after all: She's about perpetuating her uber-insider status, and not much else.

So the truth is, Mo, I'm just not into you anymore. Good luck with that whole Queen Bee thing. Of course I am willing to walk away quietly, which is more than you're going to get from Bob Somerby (who, come to think about it, is almost as good as a Lexis/Nexis subscription--even better, when you consider he works up to speed by calling her a "gender war stump," whatever that means, even before he really starts getting pissed). He will be with you to the grave.

Gore: Will he or won't he?

(Updated below.)

In one of the more surprising cross-pollinations of politics and entertainment, people are out there giving odds that not only will Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" will get the Oscar for best documentary tonight, but that in a departure from protocol Gore himself will accept the award rather than the producer or director, and that he'll use the occasion and the mega-audience to announce his candidacy for President in 2008.

I still stand by my prediction and hope that he's become too well-adjusted to run.

But anything's possible. This could be one of those great "do you remember where you were when?" moments--not up there with hearing the news of a Kennedy assassination or OJ's acquittal, but probably higher than Colin Powell's 1996 announcement that he wouldn't run for president (sh-yeah, remember when that was a plausible option, Mr. Secretary?)

And just to add depth and texture, here's my take on "An Inconvenient Truth," and here's Melissa Etheridge's Oscar-nominated song from the film:



Update: SilentPatriot at Crooks and Liars takes the thought experiment even further, quoting an earlier bit by Kos containing this memorable phrase: "instantly make hundreds of millions spent by his primary opponents obsolete."

Q: When is a "Democrat" not a Democrat?

A: When he's a "petitioning Democrat."

From the Hartford [CT] Courant's web site, although you can read steady updates at AmericaBlog, FireDogLake, Eschaton, and DailyKOS, among many many other places:

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman announced today he will petition for a place on the November ballot as an "independent Democrat," giving him a chance to stay alive politically should he lose an Aug. 8 primary for the Democratic nomination.

Lieberman, 64, a three-term senator whose outspoken support of the war in Iraq has brought months of grief and inspired a strong primary challenge from Greenwich businessman Ned Lamont, announced his decision this afternoon at a brief press conference at the State Capitol.

I'll admit it; I was pissed at Al Gore for a long time after the 2000 election. I thought he ran a wavering campaign, I thought he should have exploited Bill Clinton's popularity and fund-raising prowess for everthing it was worth, and I thought his recount endgame seemed to indicate he didn't want the Presidency all that badly.

I've mellowed since then. It's hard to remember it now, but Nader's Green Party candidacy brought some value to the campaign--although his "no difference between Republicans and Democrats" finish was deplorably foolish, and bought him the obscurity he now so richly deserves. Also, after 6 years of having my head held underwater by Bob Somerby, I get it that I greatly underappreciated how much of Gore's problem was a hostile and dismissive media.

And Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" penance has also gone a long way toward clearing his slate.

But there's still one thing Al has yet to atone for: He elevated Joe Lieberman to national notice, largely because--oh, how he began as he planned to continue--Joe was the first Democrat to publicly attack Clinton during Monicagate. If not for Gore, Lieberman would have no national cred that he could barter with the Bush Administration to play his self-flattering role as "moderate" "deal maker."

Sorry, Al--but you still have to answer for Joe.

A good start might be a heart-to-heart with your erstwhile running mate on the virtues of party loyalty and the dignity of accepting the will of one's constituents.