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That line should have gotten Dan into Bartlett's Familiar Quotations and fits Al Gore perfectly. If you ever use it, make sure to deliver the line with a thick (or "tick," as they'd say) Irish brogue. Dan was my grandfather and he grew up on a dairy farm in County Clare in the west of Ireland where wit, love of words and candor were as cherished as the marvelous cream the Buckley cows still produce.
Gore would baffle Dan. He'd never understand how this man who would be President so often fabricates, exaggerates, embellishes and evades the truth in cases where just telling it straight would result in a far better, and certainly less embarrassing, outcome. Why does he do it? Will or can he ever stop?
Well, being Bill Clinton's lap dog for eight years doesn't help, but Gore's propensity to simply make things up predates his days as vice president. During his failed run for the presidency in 1988, a Gore staff member wrote him a memo asking him to control the wild stretches and whoppers, since his aides were spending too much time trying to clean up after him.
The litany of Gore lies is long and laughable. His "initiative" led to the creation of the Internet, he "discovered" the Love Canal, he "always" was pro-choice, he's "always" fought for gun control and against the tobacco industry, etc.,etc. Gore's sloppiness with the truth was so obvious at last Wednesday's debate, he was forced to say he was sorry and pledged to "do better with details." It's amazing that Gore took that long to catch on to the political fall-out from his whoppers. I like the description of Gore as the kid who'd raise his hand in class and say, "Teacher, teacher, you forget to give us homework."
It's clear Gore has an insatiable need to please, a characteristic his ambitious, political parents instilled in him. But there is danger in that and, should he become President, let's pray he learns to control his fondness for fantasy. His and our nation's credibility could depend on it.
The most shameless prevaricator on the Republican side is vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney. When his Democratic opponent, Sen. Joe Lieberman, poked at him for the millions he's hauled in working in the private sector, Cheney responded, "I can tell you, Joe, that the government had absolutely nothing to do with it." Wrong! Dead wrong! The government had everything to do with the wealth Cheney's amassed. The contacts Cheney made as White House chief of staff, congressman and defense secretary enabled him to land the post of chairman and CEO of Halliburton, the Texas-based oil services company.
Halliburton brings in billions in revenue from oil-rich countries in the Middle East. Cheney is on a first-name basis with the heads of state from Gulf War days, and you can bet your bippy the Halliburton board members who hired Cheney knew he could cash in on those government service-nurtured contacts.
Halliburton also is a corporate welfare queen. The company is a major beneficiary of two obscure federal agencies, the U.S. Export-Import Bank and The Overseas Private Investment Corp. Last winter, Cheney engineered a $500 million loan guarantee for Halliburton with the Export-Import Bank to build an oil-recovery project in Russia. The federal bucks, and full faith and credit of the American taxpayers, underwrote the Cheney company's venture.
Halliburton also rakes in government dollars from the Pentagon. During Cheney's five-year watch, the defense department awarded contracts to Halliburton worth $1.8 billion dollars. Overall, the Washington cozy company has dipped into your wallet for $ 3.8 billion dollars in contracts and taxpayer-insured loans during Cheney's years on corporate welfare. The conservative from Wyoming has picked up $39 million dollars in salary and stock options from Halliburton before his attempt to return to government service. Without the federal largess, Cheney wouldn't be so rich and the voters wouldn't have to listen to his mendacious remark that "the government had absolutely nothing to do with it."
Bush and Gore are spending a great deal of time in Michigan, a state considered pivotal for victory in November. They're both terrible and predictable speakers and when covering them, reporters are given no opportunities to grill them. Not so with Green Party candidate Ralph Nader. He is accessible, candid and smart. He recently spoke to The Economic Club of Detroit and went right into the lion's den and blasted the auto industry for its record on safety issues. He pulled no punches and let Bridgestone-Firestone have it for the tire problems that sparked the nationwide recall. Nader also found fault with Ford's handling of the recall that involved, in many cases, the popular Ford Explorer. Auto company executives, usually mainstays at the Economic Club luncheons, boycotted the event. Gee, I bet they hurt Ralph's feelings.
Nader told reporters the issues the candidates won't discuss at the debates he's foolishly banned from. Here they are, since you certainly won't read them in The Alabama Rag, a.k.a. the Niagara Gazette. Here's Nader's list of taboo issues: lack of affordable housing, lax enforcement on corporate crime, fraud and abuse, the diversion of hundreds of billions of taxpayer subsidies, handouts, giveaways, and ballots when they're needed back in the communities and neighborhoods. They won't be discussing withdrawing from the World Trade Organization and NAFTA, and renegotiating trade agreements to lift standards up rather than pull standards down and decimate our industries and industrial jobs in this country. They won't talk about real, full public funding of public campaigns. They won't talk about immediate, universally accessible health insurance, and they won't talk about repealing the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, a notoriously anti-labor law that has prevented tens of millions of low-paid workers in this country from forming trade unions in order to raise their non-living wages to a minimally sustainable living standard such as in Walmart, K-Mart and McDonald's.
"But the key thing they won't talk about is the need to shift power away from giant corporations who have far too much power over our government, marketplace and workplace to voters, workers, consumers and taxpayers. That's really the central issue of the campaign. The excessive concentration of power and wealth in too few hands against the many, where the few make the decisions for the many and have produced this incredible, unprecedented situation in our country's history: sustained economic growth on the one hand and the majority of the workers falling behind on the other."
Nader was asked if voting for him was a "wasted vote." He spoke of the poor choice voters are given, "the least of the worst of the two political parties," and when voting for the Democratic or Republican candidates you "further legitimize the future, continual decline of the two parties, so they both get worse in future years."
Except for his opposition to free trade, I think old Ralph's right on the mark. It's sad we're stuck with the two worst candidates the Democrats and Republicans have offered in the post-World War II Era.
America deserves better.