Letters to the Editor
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Oh pul-eeze
Every time I hear menton of Gore `08 I feel obliged to throw a bucket of ice water on the discussion as a therapeutic measure.
Look, I know Al Gore has grown over the years, but I also remember that he ran in 1988 and went nowhere against Michael Dukakis (maybe the memory of Tipper on the rock-n'-roll star chamber was too fresh). He ran in 1992 and had to settle for veep. In 2000 he had the nomination handed to him. He turned in a lame performance in the presidential debates (when Bush claimed that all three men who murdered a black man in Jasper TX were going to be executed, Gore could have easily pointed out that the Governor of Texas was mistaken, only two of them had been sentenced to death).
Personally, I think what lost Florida for him was when he came to Miami and claimed Elian Gonzalez should be separated from his Cuban father and be left with his manipulative fruitcake realtives in Miami. In doing so, he alienated 95% of Floridians who were appalled by the spectacle in order to try to win a few votes from the same voting bloc who supplied us with the Watergate burglars and who regularly vote somewhere to the right of G. Gordon Liddy.
Finally, I think there's a percetion among many voters that after a guy runs unsuccessfully a few times, he becomes another Harold Stassen. I see that at local levels, and we've seen in national elections that the candidates who drop out the soonest are the ones who have run the most times. Jimmy Carter got elected in 1976 because he was running against a field of Democrats who had run in 1964, 1968 and 1972 and were running again in 1976.
It's time for more new talent.