My Left Winger Nonpartisan posted an article today called The Greatest Environmental Politician in the History of the World in which (s)he posited the idea that Al Gore should be our next President.
I do not exactly “oppose” that idea. Mr. Gore’s own tendencies…positive AND negative…already do that well enough to free me from that task.
But I DO oppose the left blogosphere’s ongoing meme that he would make a good presidential candidate. It is simply a waste of precious energy and time.
I make my case below.
Read on.
Al Gore has a problem.
And here it is:
Yup.
Al Gore himself.
He is unelectable.
More unelectable than he was in 2000, when he almost won against the worst presidential candidate in the history of American politics. He SHOULD have beaten Butchie Boy so badly that no amount of vote theft whatsoever short of an armed coup could have put BushCo in power, but he didn’t.
And why didn’t he? He is apparently a decent man, an honorable man as politicians go, an intelligent man. Why didn’t he win, besides the semen stained albatross of a little blue dress that was tied around his already going-to-fat neck?
Because HE POSES.
JUST like that goddamned picture.
His silver spoon just sticks out all over him.
And he got out-imaged as a result.
I am sorry. I really am. But he is unelectable in this day and age.
This Information age.
An age where image is more important than content.
Every time he opens his mouth, every time he strikes a pose he turns off about 38% on the undecided electorate.
Newt Gingrich would EAT HIM UP in a presidential campaign.
Bet on it.
He’d come across as Cousin Newtie, Brother Newt, the spokesman for the simple people, and he would make Al look like the stuffed shirt he really is.
A largely CORRECT stuffed shirt, but like I said…image wins.
Bill Clinton did not win on content…he won on IMAGE.
He is a good looking, sexy, smart man and he LOOKS it. It didn’t take much buffing to present that image. He is a media natural.
The fact that he was also politically and tactically correct was beside the point. (“They” were politically correct. As Hillary Clinton so correctly pointed out in 2000, “We are the president.”)
He won on sex appeal.
He appealed to both men and women.
On a basic, visceral level.
Good on him.
You use whatcha got.
If only he hadn’t used it quite so often…
So has Butch won on image.
Twice now.
It is a painstakingly crafted image, built by master adverting guys…Rove, et al…but he is the right dumb fuck for the task.
Gore?
I am sorry, but Bill Clinton couldn’t take a picture this bad 12 days after he was DEAD.
I am talking contemporary political reality, here, Nonpartisan. Nothing else. It’s not about “right” or “wrong”. It’s just about winning. And if you are going to win in America today on the national stage no matter WHAT your beliefs, you MUST have someone who looks good. Sorry. There it is. I leave it up to posterity…if indeed we HAVE much of a posterity…to judge the justice and relative effectiveness of that reality. But reality it is.
Hillary understands this.
So does Barack Obama.
That’s why they are going to come together.
Obama will be Hillary’s good lookin’, smooth-talkin’ front man…Bill C. v.2… while she becomes the wise and well settled Mother-Of-Us-All who has survived all adversity and come out on top.
Watch.
And Al?
If we are lucky, he will be the first U.S. Green Ambassador To The World. Maybe in the U.N., where a stuffed shirt is considered proper dress. De rigeur unless you are Nikolai Khrushchev.
Gore will end up somewhere in a Clinton administration.
Somewhere…
Over the Green Rainbow.
But not in the White House.
Bet on it.
AG
