Gore Point: Concentrate on Con Side

As U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson’s investigative committee prepares to open hearings on the fund-raising scandals of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton-Gore campaign, Democrat presidential aspirants will be watching warily. And that brings to mind Vice President Albert Gore.

Excuse me, but am I the only one for whom the sight of Al Gore conjures up the word “doofus”?

Maybe it’s the woodenness that gives robotics a bad name. Could you pick him out in a telephone pole factory? Or perhaps it’s that dorky, apple-polishing schoolboy look standing next to his idol, Bill Clinton. More grating is his speech--with those stupefyingly elongated and over-pronounced words.

The man is a walking invitation for David Letterman’s Top Ten.

But as tempting as it is to dismiss Gore as Mom’s harmless and eccentric brother, his presidential quest commands our scrutiny. The Tennessean with stiletto ambition is a much more layered pol than appears. Lurking beneath are a gut-fighter’s ruthlessness, calculated cunning, and a remorseless ability to escape crab-wise from the political damage of a soiled record. (Must reading is Tucker Carlson’s excellent “The Real Al Gore,” in the May 19 issue of the Weekly Standard.)

The Political Ear-Biter: Gore’s lack of animation belies the cut-and-slash style he favors when opponents get in his way. It was Al Gore in the 1988 Democratic primaries, not George Bush, who first hung the Willie Horton noose around Michael Dukakis’ neck. Last summer, Gore flailed away at Bob Dole as half of a “two-headed monster” from whom America had to be saved.

Recently, the vice president branded Republicans as “un-American” for their welfare reform efforts.

So watch closely for that guillotine smile.

The Hypocrite: Gore jerked delegates’ tears in last summer’s Democratic convention speech with the story of lung cancer killing his sister in 1984--the epiphany that spurred him to fight the dangers of smoking “until I draw my last breath.” He did not tell them that four years after her death, he boasted to a Southern audience of his pride as a tobacco grower. Oops.

Carlson documents Gore’s conversion to a pro-choice champion from a pro-life Democrat who voted 84% of the time with the National Right to Life Committee in 1984. A year later, Tipper Gore appeared at a highly publicized hearing before a Senate committee of which Al was a member and courageously took on the music industry for the ugliness of “porn rock.” Yet two years later, as Carlson writes, both Gores groveled for forgiveness and recanted at an L.A. lunch with music moguls because Al decided his 1988 presidential candidacy needed their financial support.

Slippery Solicitor-in-Chief: Last winter, the Washington Post exhaustively reviewed Gore’s “central role in soliciting millions of dollars in campaign money for the Democratic Party during the 1996 election.”

Donors felt enormous pressure from Gore--one called it “revolting,” and another complained “there were elements of a shakedown.” Gore conceded that many of these calls were made from the White House--just a few feet away from the Oval Office. The U.S. Criminal Code makes it a felony “to solicit or receive any contributions . . . in any room or building occupied in the discharge of official duties.”

At a press conference, Gore repeated seven times that his lawyer told him that there was “no controlling legal authority” to indicate he committed a federal crime. He said he was proud of what he did, but that he wouldn’t do it anymore. Imagine introducing this lesson in our schools: “When you’re proud of what you do, quit doing it.”

Finally, our Boy Scout vice president was last year’s headliner at California’s Hsi Lai Buddhist temple where funds likely were raised illegally for the Democratic Party.

Gore’s reflexive reaction was to lie: He said he thought it was an “outreach” event--despite DNC briefing memos which explicitly described the fund-raising purpose of the gathering.

If Gore saw a thousand-pound buffalo roaming the range, he would claim it was merely a prairie dog with a glandular condition.

Gore’s eagerness to play the fawning toady to the left, his bent toward the deceptive and the nasty and his ability to pirouette away from previous views will make Bill and Hillary proud. Seeing the doofus instead of the seasoned political con man would be a tragic national mistake.