December
21, 2002, 5:00 p.m. Forgiving
the Phony
A seasonal consideration.
By James Bowman
l Gore finally demonstrates that he knows who he is," read the headline
to an article by Damian Whitworth in the Times of London. "So
long then, loser." No, no! I thought to myself. Don't say that! It's
political hubris! Gore "sees, for the first time," says Whitworth,
"that he is a nearly man, someone who will never be President, and
a protagonist in a personal tragedy of great expectations," Could
there be anything more certain to bring down upon us all the disaster
of a victorious Gore candidacy at some point in the future? And then I
noticed the comparisons by E.
J. Dionne of the Washington Post and Michael
Barone in the Wall Street Journal between Gore and another
vice president who lost a squeaker and seemed politically dead, only to
come back not four but eight years later to win the presidency…
Oh no! When I drew
the parallel between Gore and Nixon some months ago in this space, I little
thought it would come to this! Yet let us remember that it is the season
of forgiveness and goodwill and if there is little enough of either yet
for Trent Lott, let us spare a bit for Al Gore. What, you may ask, has
Al Gore to be forgiven for? I don't know, but there must be some reason
why I hate him so. No man in public life do I find so repulsive as Al.
It's partly that he is such a transparent phony, and phony not in the
way that Bill Clinton was a phony. Clinton was conman phony, but a conman
has to be charming or he will starve to death. And Clinton was certainly
charming. Gore is utterly without charm. He is boring-phony; phony-for-the-sake-of-phoniness;
phony because he doesn't know how not to be phony.
Moreover, Clinton
was bright enough not to be taken in — most of the time — by
his own phoniness; Gore is dull as well as phony, and the worst kind of
dullard at that: Namely, one who believes that he is smarter than the
rest of us and so undetectable in the lifelong imposture that he is Al
Gore and not merely an arrogant twerp trying to impersonate him. Every
word that comes out of his mouth is hokey, and never more so than when
he is trying to project sincerity. Even the announcement that he had decided
not to run in 2004 was founded on the typically Gorean bit of hokiness
that, although he himself was up for it and could have won, his supporters
were still exhausted from the race of 2000 and would have allowed their
desire for revenge to become the focus of the campaign.
But it is hard not
to reflect that there is another point of comparison between the two former
vice presidents. For I, like many on the Right, hate Gore the way that
many on the Left hated Nixon. Maybe this is because, as Mr. Barone points
out, neither were natural politicians. The obviousness of their labors
when it came to acting their political parts was a constant reminder,
especially to those not well disposed towards them in the first place,
of their essential phoniness. In Nixon's case this led to the "Tricky
Dick" and "used-car salesman" taunts which became self-fulfilling.
It was arguably the hatred of his enemies which made Nixon what he was
and led to the failure of his presidency. He saw it himself when he told
David Frost that "I gave them" — meaning his enemies —
"a sword." It was the hatred, which he reciprocated, which led
to the paranoia which led to Watergate.
It is looking a long
way ahead indeed to foresee some comparable disaster befalling a Gore
presidency in 2013, but just in case we should try, brothers and sisters,
in the spirit of the season, to refuse to hate Al Gore. This is all the
easier now that he has taken himself out of the running, at least for
the time being. And maybe, if we're nice to him, his presidential ambitions
will quietly fade away instead of becoming impacted and inflamed by the
frustrations of a man grown used to being loathed and despised by something
close to half the population. In this case there is, perhaps, more of
an element of self-interest in our forgiveness than a strict regard for
Christian charity might prefer, but it is still, I think, quite difficult
enough.
—
James Bowman
is, among other things, movie critic of The American Spectator and American
editor of London's Times Literary Supplement.
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l Gore finally demonstrates that he knows who he is," read the headline
to an article by Damian Whitworth in the Times of London. "So
long then, loser." No, no! I thought to myself. Don't say that! It's
political hubris! Gore "sees, for the first time," says Whitworth,
"that he is a nearly man, someone who will never be President, and
a protagonist in a personal tragedy of great expectations," Could
there be anything more certain to bring down upon us all the disaster
of a victorious Gore candidacy at some point in the future? And then I
noticed the comparisons by 
