Once around the Horn

Well, as you know Al Gore endorsed Howard Dean yesterday for President. So lets see what people are saying about that.

First of all let's check in with the new Rush, who's stay at a drug rehab facility has apparently turned him into a font of psychological understanding. "In addition to the personal characteristics of this, Gore wanting to get even with the Clintons, I actually think Gore is endorsing Dean because Dean is running the kind of campaign that Gore wanted to run but was never able to achieve. I think Gore wanted to be a radical, freewheeling populist and wanted to be perceived as authentic, and is saying to himself, 'That's what I wanted to do, and nobody would let me, Shrum wouldn't let me do it, Clintons wouldn't let me do it, that's who I wanted to be, this is my candidacy, I want to glom onto this, that's who I am.'

And it's sad that, you know, Algore sees in Dean, an angry, petulant, arrogant, aggressive, reckless little guy - everything that he never was but always wanted to be. I mean that's what I think is going on here. I've learned about this, my friends, trust me on this. I now know how to recognize these kinds of thing. "

The problem with Rush is that he has a set of unproven postulates that he holds onto with grim determination. One of those postulates is that Al Gore doesn't know who he is. That's nonsense, of course. Gore's performance in the election of 2000 was pretty sad, but his performance since then has been that of a man rejuvenated. Still I guess we've got to trust Rush's deep psychological understanding of the situation. After all, he's been through Drug Rehab and I haven't.

Jonah Goldberg spends a bit of time writing about how unfathomable Al Gore and referring to him as having a lead cased android skull (which I wish I had). He then concludes that "I understand Gore sees in Dean one qualification Lieberman doesn't have: the potential to win. But when you think about all that has happened since 9/11, for Gore to say that the post-9/11 world makes Howard Dean more, not less, qualified to be president than Joe Lieberman really shows how unserious Al Gore and his party have become."

Yep, once again, the candidate the Republicans love the most is Joe Lieberman. Mainly because in a choice between Conservatism and Diet Conservatism (Same Great "Taste," only 1 calorie), most people will still choose Conservatism. Frankly if the Democrats are going to pick our candidate based on his potential to woo Jonah Goldberg away from President Bush, they are truely doomed.

The other theorys are that Dean has no hope, but that Gore can take his followers and organization and challenge Hillary for the Nomination in 2008. This is kind of a crazy theory in my mind, but it is popular among conservatives, particularly those who subsitute cynicism and mean spiritedness for evidence.

Joe Conason has a reaction to all these theories. "Many politicians remain static throughout their careers, regardless of the changing world around them and even of their own experiences. Gore isn't one of them. He has always been more thoughtful, more observant, more intellectually open and simply more curious than the average pol. (In that respect he resembles Bill Clinton, now his supposed nemesis.) He is aware of the need for change in his own party, for instance, as his remarks this morning in Harlem showed. That's why he spoke of the Vermonter's "promise" to rebuild the Democratic Party from the grass roots. (An apt epigram I've seen on pro-Dean blogs: "Dean is the messenger. We are the message.")

Whatever the reasoning behind Gore's endorsement, I doubt that petty animosity toward the Clintons or personal ambitions were important factors. It's interesting, though, that so many political reporters gravitate automatically toward such explanations, in the absence of any evidence. Might that reflect on their own unresolved feelings about the former president and the junior senator from New York?"

That's a fair question. Americans have always been suspicious of Politicians (and with good reason), but the "Perfidy of all peole connected to Bill Clinton" Explanation is starting to wear a bit thin. Why not look at what Mr. Gore said and consider that instead of trying to imagine a reason?

"I have watched this campaign and I have listened to all of the candidates. I think it's a great field. There are a lot of great Democratic candidates out there. But what I'm about to say doesn't come as a secret or as a surprise to anybody within the sound of my voice, and that is that Howard Dean really is the only candidate who has been able to inspire, at the grassroots level all over this country, the kind of passion and enthusiasm for democracy and change and transformation of America that we need in this country.

We need to remake the Democratic Party. We need to remake America. We need to take it back on behalf of the people of this country."