Dum Pendebat Filius

Joe Conason, at Salon, is more or less singing my tune:

Al Gore must be amused by the happy transformation of his [press] clippings. The same press corps that once snarled for his blood is now smooching his boots — an implicit apology that might be gratifying to the former future president, if only he were still naive enough to value their esteem.

This is why I have been saying Gore knows better than to run again.

The answer [to why Gore won't run] may be found, of all places, in the Note, that snarky weblog on the ABC News site, which often betrays the true emotions roiling the minds of mainstream journalists. Said the Note, in explaining the recent spate of positive coverage of the old press nemesis: “Basically, the political press wants to tempt Al Gore into the race, and then they will destroy him as a flip-flopping, exaggerating, stiff loser. And Gore knows this.”

“Flip-flopping, exaggerating, stiff loser” would actually be better press than Gore was getting from the Left-Wing Liberal News Media during Campaign 2000.

I will take exception to two statements Conason makes in this brief article:

Although Gore himself certainly deserves a measure of blame for the catastrophic conclusion of the 2000 presidential election and the events that led up to it, his hateful treatment by the press slanted the campaign against him from the beginning. (Perhaps only Ralph Nader is more culpable for the irreparable harms of the Bush era, but that is an arguable proposition.)

One: Does Gore actually “deserve a measure of blame”? Everyone knows to say that Gore ran a terrible campaign in 2000, but no one ever seems to be able to mention anything he specifically did wrong. Conason certainly doesn’t try to do so here, but perhaps he did not have enough (virtual) column inches (so to speak) allocated to him to do so.

Two: Ralph Nader? Are you fucking kidding me?

But we’ll let those two quibbles go, and simply recommend you check out Conason’s short but interesting piece.