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Is Al Gore secretly running for President of the United States?
Poll after poll after poll shows that Democrats are increasingly concerned about the possibility of nominating a woman for president or an African-American. They worry about the red states and even more about some of the blue ones John Kerry barely carried in his loss to incumbent George W. Bush. The most realistic solution is to nominate a Gore-Clinton ticket. A winning ticket.
Gore is campaigning. He is now an Oscar winning producer. He is a rock concert impresario. He is the world's most visible savior of the planet. He is on national and local news daily, usually restating his position that he is not a candidate for president. But he also restates he has not ruled the idea out completely.
He won't.
Gore is enjoying newly found respectability in the world. He likes the public attention. He has said that the most important decision to be made in the future is whether the United States will elect a president who will set an environmental agenda that meets with Gore's criteria. "That is key," he said. Who among the current candidates fit his criteria? None of them have yet to enunciate any proposals that remotely resemble what Gore wants for the environment.
Gore will run but he wants to run without having to shake hands and kiss babies in the primary states or raise huge sums of money. He is so well known; he can easily jump into the fray after the early primaries and feel good about his chances. Considering the quality of his opposition, he can't lose.
Gore-Clinton is the winning ticket.
A few words from R.E. "Gus" Payne
Delusional Democrats
Barack Obama
He can't win. He can't even get nominated. (He can get nominated but only if the Democrats choose between winning the White House and making a point.) He's too black (it shouldn't be an issue, but in the real world, it is). He is too inexperienced. He can't even be the consensus candidate of the most delusional Democrats who hope to capture the White House in 2008. Hillary Clinton is there to stop him. All Obama is accomplishing now is distracting onlookers from focusing their gaze on the real candidate who has a chance to win the White House, that being Hillary Clinton. Presently Obama is showing up well, just as did Howard Dean in 2004, but who when it mattered could not win a primary. Analyze the blue and red states: How many can Obama win, if nominated? Enough to win the presidency? No way.
If Obama doesn't get out of the way, the Democrats won't be able to come up with a candidate who can win until it is too late to raise the money for a 'consensus' candidate in the 20 or more states that hold primaries on February 5, 2008. This will leave a hole big enough for the Republican candidate to walk through come November. All indications and polls show that the Republicans will get behind their nominee early, solidify their unity and all of this while Obama continues to distract his party from fund raising and unity.
I've heard some Democrats who claim their "dream ticket" is Clinton-Obama for 2008. This isn't a dream but a nightmare. Which of the red states will this ticket take from the Republicans? None. How many blue states won by John Kerry can this ticket carry? Four or five, maybe. The answer is not known for certain but one thing is clear: It cannot win the election in 2008.
If the Democrats really decide they want to win the White House, they must unify now behind Hillary Clinton with a moderate as vice president, someone like Bill Richardson of New Mexico. If they choose instead to dream, well, they do so with the full knowledge that dreams do not always come true.
March 2007
Have the Media and the War in Iraq Polarized our Society?
Our media analysts are fond of telling us that we live in a "divided" or "polarized" society in America. Blame is placed on the major political parties, claiming they have a vested interest in turning rich against poor, black against white, female against male, etc.. The cable news and print media, especially, seemingly pinpoints blame for any wrongdoing it perceives. But it never chooses to blame itself.
What is the genesis of polarization in our society? Eric Voeglin, the world-known philosopher and teacher, discusses this subject in his essay "Revolution, the Open Society, and Institutions". It lies not with Republican or Democrats but in the success of the American Revolution, as distinguished from French or Russian or even a German National Socialist revolution. "Of the major revolutions it is, one might say, the only one that has been truly successful," wrote Voeglin. Because of this success, a great deal of envy is to be found among European intellectuals, especially among the French. Since our American intellectuals are strongly influenced by European intellectuals, and others, these influences show up and help exploit differences between us. "That a large sector of American intellectuals is anti-American must be acknowledged, even if they would deny it; it is the same anti-Americanism that is be found among European intellectuals," he wrote. We need not worry ourselves, however, that these American anti-Americans shall ever amount to anything resembling a potent political force - "if, for no other reasons than because, so far as I know the most ardent "liberal" intellectuals, short of a few scholars, are not literate enough" to understand the thoughts of Hegel or Karl Marx.
The language of "polarization" is more popular now than it was when Voeglin observed it. He believed that because of the structure of American society, attempts at polarization will fail and that the dissenters will end up in near isolation, they themselves separated from the rest of us. However, one must recall the Vietnam War era. Voeglin did. Without commenting on whether America should have been engaged in the war or not, he concluded the answer to the question was not nearly as important as was the fact that "once it was started it had to be carried through to some sort of conclusion, because one cannot simply end a war by walking out of it."
This all sounds very familiar to us today, but now the war is in Iraq and not Vietnam.
The polarization of America over our involvement in Vietnam was brought up by the news media, especially by television, when Voeglin said the destruction on TV news appeared to be caused by America, while very little attention was paid to the destruction caused by the other side. What appeared to be America's relentless destruction of pathetic little villages in a Third World country aroused protest and dissention in America. The fact these horrors were caused by others and not by our American government only was forgotten or disregarded by the media.
"On this occasion the enormous power of the mass media under the control of the intellectual establishment became manifest," wrote Voeglin. Even worse, he explained how the media resulted in turning America's military defeat of the Communists in the Tet offensive of 1988 into an American defeat through "the propaganda of the mass media". Other lies were told by the mass electronic media, such as, when the American bombing of the dikes in North Vietnam were made to look like the savage attacks against helpless, innocent civilians. Or the fact that it had been overlooked completely that the Communists had invaded Cambodia and that efforts to repel them was the subject of 'atrocious American aggression.'
All of this in reference to Vietnam is very muck like what is happening today in regard to Iraq. Again, it does not matter at this point how America got there, but only that we are there, and that we simply cannot pack up and leave a war.
Voeglin's contention is that there exist serious intellectual problems in academia in the U.S., as well as in the news media, especially television. From the academic world with its flair for "political correctness", intellectual dishonesty has spread into our educational system where our younger generations are in danger of losing any realistic understanding of a democratic government such as their grandparents grew up with in America. This is a great danger to our future as a single, unified nation, if these trends are allowed to continue. The genesis of increased polarization.
The words of Voeglin should be read and heeded today: "Certainly we are confronted today with a massive social force of aggression, intellectual dishonesty that penetrates the academic world, as well as other sectors of society, that will beg for correction in one form or another if the situation should ever become critical."
I believe the situation is now critical.
R E Gus Payne, September 2007