The New New Gore

Five years ago, Al Gore was the much-mocked pol who blew a gimme with his stiff demeanor and know-it-all style. Today? C’mon, admit it: You like him again.

By Ezra Klein
Issue Date: 04.08.06



The most important speech of Al Gore’s post–non-presidency was neither well-covered nor particularly dramatic. He delivered it against a plain blue curtain, and when he finished, the applause rippled but never roared. None in attendance, however, would have dared call it boring.

The address was the keynote for the We Media conference, held at the Associated Press headquarters in New York last October and attended by an audience that included both old media luminaries and new media innovators. In attendance were Tom Curley, president of the AP, Andrew Heyward, president of CBS News, and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, all leading lights of a media establishment that, five years earlier, had deputized itself judge, jury, and executioner for Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign, spinning each day’s events to portray the stolid, capable vice president as a wild exaggerator, ideological chameleon, and total, unforgivable bore.

They must have been wondering what changed. Over the next 48 minutes, Gore laced into the state of the media, lamenting the “systematic decay of the public forum,” and echoing Walter Lippmann’s belief that the propaganda emanating from the press corps was rendering America’s “dogma of democracy” void. Journalism, Gore said, had grown “dysfunctional,” and now “fails to inform the people.”

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...Yes, Klein builds much of his new Prospect piece around the image of Gore as “the man much mocked for inventing the Internet.” And yes, we think that’s unwise—as we see from Drum’s laughable excerpt. But omigod! Writing in a major liberal journal, Klein reports an important story, one these journals have refused to tell until now. He isn’t direct enough for our tastes. But right there in his second paragraph, Klein reports the basic facts which have been forbidden in such journals until now. As he describes a Gore speech from last fall, he finally tells readers the unvarnished truth about Campaign 2000. Among the liberal media elite, telling the truth about that race has not been allowed—until now:



For the record, Klein is wrong when he says “five years earlier;” the process he describes began (in full fury) in March 1999, the instant Gore first opened his mouth as a candidate for the 2000 Dem nomination. (The claim that Al Gore said he invented the Internet was the press corps’ reaction to Gore’s first interview as a declared candidate.) But yes: From March 99 through November 2000, the media establishment (not the conservative press corps) did in fact “deputize itself judge, jury, and executioner for Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign, spinning each day’s events to portray the stolid, capable vice president as a wild exaggerator.” In that executioner’s role, they invented a long string of tales about Gore, which they repeated again and again (for an example from today’s Post, see below). Let’s repeat, and this is important: Just as Klein writes, this was done by the “media establishment,” not by Rush Limbaugh, and not by Fox; it was done by the AP, by CBS News, and, most important, by the New York Times (and the Washington Post). These institutions spent twenty months serving as Gore’s “executioner” (Klein’s word). In the end, their twenty-month slander campaign sent the hapless George Bush to the White House.

To our taste, Klein isn’t direct enough in this piece. But right there, in his second paragraph, we finally see, in a liberal journal, a wholly accurate capsule statement of what occurred in Campaign 2000. And how does Drum respond to this? Our young analysts did what came naturally; they simply laughed at this empty suit when they read the ludicrous excerpt he posted. By the way: If you want to know why Gore almost surely can’t run, Drum’s chosen excerpt—so completely dim-witted—explains the matter fairly plainly.

PRAISING EZRA: Yes, our young analysts laughed till they cried—but let’s make sure we understand the important thing which has finally happened. For the first time, a major liberal journal, the American Prospect, has printed an accurate capsule statement of what occurred during Campaign 2000. We think Klein’s overall presentation is a tad soft; that capsule folds into his larger report in such a way that readers might not notice it. But liberal journals have simply refused to tell this important story before now. Klein has now stated it—accurately.

Daily Howler for March 21, 2006