Soccer Dad

We're not worthy

It's touching when a teacher is proud of his student. Really.

OK, most of the time.

Martin Peretz's praise of his student (and friend) Al Gore, though, comes across as bizarre.

No one has devoted himself with such dedication and intellectual probity to a cause as important as this one. No one. So he deserves the Nobel.

Therefore

... the country deserves Al Gore to make another run at the presidency, he having lost his last try through chicanery and the arrogance of a party for which lying is second nature. Or maybe first.

Lost "through chicanery?" Let's check what TNR's own Ryan Lizza had to report in "Overtime" ( New Republic, 00286583, 11/27/2000) about those heady days when VP Al Gore strove to reverse the election of 2000.

The Gore campaign's efforts have closely tracked Sautter's recommendations, which he summarized in a 1990 article for Campaigns and Elections that later served as the basis for his book. "The best advice to give any candidate unlucky enough to be caught in a recount is to hire a good lawyer," Sautter wrote then. "But you can't conduct a recount without organization. Many recounts--like many close campaigns--are won in the trenches with dedicated, low-paid field staff and volunteers fighting for votes one at a time." That's exactly the kind of minutiae the Gore campaign has been focusing on in Florida--for instance, going to court in Palm Beach this week to demand that "dimpled" chads be counted as votes after the county adopted a stricter standard. "Practically every recount turns up missed ballots," writes Sautter, who advises candidates to search for signs of voter intent.

Other advice from Sautter's 1990 article is also clearly being followed in Florida. He wrote, presciently, "When razor-thin margins separate candidates on election night, the final outcome often turns on complex legal maneuverings and an arduous vote recount conducted in the weeks that follow. If your campaign is unprepared to challenge results, it doesn't stand a chance." "If you are behind," he continued, "and there are reliable reports of problems--such as fraud or eligible voters being turned away--which could affect the outcome, invite the press to investigate complaints." Sound familiar?

It's hard to say that "dimpled" chads showed intent to vote for someone. They could just as easily have signalled someone's intent not to vote. Insisting that the county adopt the looser standard is not a sign of probity. It is manipulating the system. If you can read Lizza's whole article it could be summarized, "if you don't have the votes, make sure you have lawyers who can game the system."

And the honesty of Nobel Award winning Al Gore that would qualify him to lead us is also somewhat open to dispute. A judge in Britain just ruled that there are significant scientific mistakes in his Academy Award winning film, including

Mr Gore's reference to a new scientific study showing that, for the first time, polar bears had actually drowned "swimming long distances - up to 60 miles - to find the ice". The judge said: "The only scientific study that either side before me can find is one which indicates that four polar bears have recently been found drowned because of a storm."

Yikes. So Al Gore is someone who tried to bend the rules in order to become President and now is exaggerating about polar bears.

Don't run Al. We don't deserve you. We're not worthy.

al gore, inconvenient truths.