Al Gore
BA, Harvard University
Do we hold former vice president and presidential candidate Al Gore entirely responsible for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, the nearly 4,500 casualties among American combatants, the tens of thousands of injured and damaged American troops, the more than $2 trillion the war has cost, and the myriad other fuckups associated with that misbegotten, irresponsible, reckless, stupid (and illegal) adventure? Not entirely. But some.
You may think us insane for even suggesting as much, but bear with us.
This worst-ever American foreign-policy decision was in fact led by Yale double-dropout* DICK CHENEY and his merry band of Iraq-crazed neocon chicken hawks, who populated the administration of President George W. Bush. Had Gore been president, it is inconceivable that he would have invaded Iraq on the basis of faked evidence that Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks of September 11, 2001. But—and it’s a big but—if not for Al Gore, George W. Bush would not have been elected* president.
Bush “won” in Florida, and hence “won” the election, by a mere 537 votes. (We’ll have more to say about this in our discussion of Ralph Nader.) As a presidential candidate, Gore was not a good campaigner. He was stiff and humorless, and for some reason he kept repeating the word “lockbox” whenever the cameras were rolling. “Lockbox! Lockbox!” (We think it had something to do with Social Security.) But Gore had a formidable weapon at his disposal. He’d been the vice president of Bill Clinton, one of the greatest campaigners ever, who was ready, willing, and able to hit the hustings for his VP. Did Gore deploy this weapon? No, he did not. In fact, he avoided Clinton the way a lottery winner avoids a grifter cousin. Why? Because Bill had been impeached by the GOP morality squad. Clinton and his high approval rating survived, but Gore didn’t want to have his own prissy little image sullied by the president’s peccadillos.
Would a campaign-long boost from Clinton have lifted Gore enough in Florida to overcome that 537-vote deficit? Hmm. In a quick wormhole-hop over to a certain parallel universe we know, we observed that, yes, Gore, with Clinton’s help, beat Bush by a comfortable margin in Parallel Florida. So that’s settled.
But wait! There’s more! In addition to having Bush’s brother Jeb on hand as governor and chief enforcer of Florida, the GOP sent its A-team of unscrupulous bullyboys and dirty tricksters to oversee the recount. When Gore finally conceded, it wasn’t because everyone was satisfied that the recount was fair and Bush had legitimately won. It was because of a supine media, a supine Florida legislature, and the Supine—sorry; the Supreme Court* of the United States, which stopped the recount, ratified the work of the bullyboys, and handed the election to Bush. That’s when Gore dropped the option of pushing on with the recount, gave up, and curtseyed graciously to fellow Ivy League alum W—despite having won both the national and the Florida popular vote.*
One more thing. Who(m) had Gore picked as his running mate? Why, Joe Lieberman, who had been the very first Democratic senator to parachute in from the moral high ground to join the Republican impeachment squad* in wagging their fingers at Bill Clinton. Why choose someone so obnoxious and so whiny that having him on the ticket must have driven down Gore’s numbers by a nontrivial percentage? Because Gore wanted Lieberman’s self-righteous ass right there next to him, as proof of his own moral worthiness. Which must also be the reason for that cringy, practically openmouthed kiss Gore and his (now estranged) wife, Tipper,* shared at the Democratic convention. We’re in love! There’ll be no out-of-wedlock splooging in the White House when I’m president! Lockbox! Lockbox!
And then came 9/11 and the shit-show of the George W. Bush years. No, Al Gore wasn’t responsible for all of that. But if he’d made a few better decisions—using more of his brain and spine, less of his good manners—none of it would have come to pass.
Personal message to Al Gore: Stay away from politics. Continue saving the Earth.