As part of their extended review of the media hate on Gore, The Daily Howler takes issue with Arianna Huffington’s reversal from her harsh stance in 2000 on Al Gore:
In our view, Arianna judged extremely unwisely during Campaign 2000—but of course, that sometimes happens. Sadly, she was worse than unwise when she savaged Gore as a serial liar—when she typed the phony scripts which plainly sent Bush to the White House. (By the way: Gore always was pro-choice.) This is precisely the “horrific” conduct which Heilemann knows he must never report. And Arianna refuses to mention it too—though she practiced it, back in real time. Today, she says it’s Gore who has changed—and, without mentioning how she has changed, she once again sits down to judge him.
I sympathize with the concern that, in retrospect, many well-meaning liberals and moderates bought into the lie that Gore was the Wrong Answer. Whether you went Nader because Gore wasn’t lib enough or wished you could go McCain because he seemed to be the one politician with integrity (my, how times change), or you didn’t vote at all because, as Arianna was quoted as saying in 2000, “This is not a choice, it’s a farce,” it was probably the wrong call.
But that was before Bush. We took a lot of things for granted then. Remember how impossible it seemed that we would ever be Worldwide Imperialist Fascist Bad Guys? Or that we would undo all that deficit reduction so quickly? Or that so many basic rights and privileges would come under attack at home?
It was easy to nitpick in 2000 because so many things were going well. We were looking for someone to come in and better what turned out to be the apex of good times in recent history. In retrospect, that was asking too much of Gore. He probably could’ve run a better campaign in some ways, but many did buy into the anti-hype that he was disingenuous and boring. Folks probably had little reason to be as cautious of the media as we are now (though the media’s obnoxious, overblown, apocalyptic spin-a-thon on the Lewinsky incident was probably an obvious indicator that we should trust nothing).
Bush painted himself as the anti-nation-building minimalist uniter, and, frankly, he seemed somewhat pathetic. Now, lots of posters in the burgeoning blogosphere knew the minute he took Cheney under his arm (or was that the other way around?) that things were gonna get bad if he won, but it was tough to convince a lot of voters to get mad enough to turn out against the guy. The sense of general invincibility was too strong.
There were those who knew Gore was always a great choice and that he was unfairly assaulted by a media lynch mob. There were those who had a damn good idea that the Bush administration would make us all sorry. If you are one of them, you can absolutely say “I told you so.” But there’s no reason to go too far in judging Huffington — she was operating under a whole different set of basic assumptions and expectations about the media and the government back in 2000. Her 180 is a microcosm of the reversal of a huge chunk of all liberals/moderates.
The Daily Howler’s doing a great job of illustrating the hack job done on Gore by the media, then and now, and I do wish Arianna was saying things like “I was wrong about Gore” rather than “Gore has changed.” However, that’s an understandable mistake. Gore does look a helluva lot better than he did in 2000 to those who expected too much from him. It might take a while for those folks to see they were the ones with the wrong idea then, but as long as they’ve got the right idea now on the guy, let’s run with that, eh?
After all, I doubt we’ll see Gore making 700 Club appearances anytime soon.
We were looking for someone to come in and better what turned out to be the apex of good times in recent history.
Very well said. I was an early Nader supporter, although I came to my senses in time to vote for Gore (being an Oregonian, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway) because I sensed the edges of what the Bush presidency would be.
But the point is, Clinton made it look so easy that even cynical me thought that no matter who we elected, it could only get so bad – i.e. minor variations on the Clintonite theme.
I grew up under Reagan. I really, really should have known what to expect.
[...] I’m not making this up, either. Lindsay linked to another part of the Daily Howler series I took issue with on the media’s dislike for Gore, but in their piece on Huffington I carped about, we saw someone in the media make the very 180 I’m predicting on Gore. [...]