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Gore, discovering the “real” reason Bush invaded Iraq, reveals his own psychopathy
Monday afternoon, October 18th, Gore was on C-SPAN, speaking at Georgetown University, at an event sponsored by the leftist organization moveon.org. He was addressing the question of why Bush seems so inflexible, so resistant to facts in making his decisions, especially with regard to Iraq. Gore said it’s not because of a lack of intelligence on Bush’s part, and it’s not because of Bush’s religious beliefs. He says the reason for Bush’s inflexibility is ideology, namely his “right-wing Republican” ideology devoted to the well-being of “corporations” and the “rich.” Bush, says Gore, is engaged in “the most radical effort in American history to take what belongs to the American people and give it to the already wealthy and powerful.” Thanks for the edifying insights, Mr. Gore. After three years of tireless speculation, we now finally know the real reason why Bush staked his whole presidency on an extremely risky invasion of Iraq. It was to line the pockets of his wealthy friends. Of course. Why didn’t we see it before? His pumped-up, wildly off-target analysis of Bush is yet another example of the clunkiness and bad timing for which Gore has become legendary. The day before he gave this speech, the New York Times Magazine published Ron Suskind’s remarkable article showing that it is indeed Bush’s faith (and instincts) that guides him in his presidential decision making. Actually, what Suskind said, based on interviews with Bush and his close advisors, was that the president reaches his decisions by instinct, while looking for overall guidance through faith and prayer. The key thing is that Bush does not use discursive reasoning either to reach his decisions or to explain them. Now that is damning enough, right? But it wasn’t damning enough for Gore, who had to have it that Bush’s messianic policies are really driven by nothing but a venal desire to enrich his friends. Another example of Gore’s increasing nuttiness was his speech about the Abu Ghraib prison abuses, in which, with the intensity of one who has made a great and horrible discovery, he argued that what happened at Abu Ghraib was not a mere excess or crime, but an expression of the moral essence of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. How can one person, this Gore person who came within 500 votes in Florida of being elected president of the United States, be so thunderously off-base so often? My theory: it was planted in Gore at an early age that he was destined to be president and had to be president, so that not being president disorders his whole being, making him behave in unbalanced, overwrought ways, as in the 2000 presidential debates, when he was arrogant and condescending in one debate, then painfully humble in the next debate, then a charging shark (sneaking up behind his opponent as his opponent was speaking!) in the third debate. Whatever Gore does, whether he’s being arrogant or self-effacing, whether he’s appealing to the emotions of a black audience or acting like a policy wonk, he overdoes it, because of his driving compulsion to be president. Ironically, if he had relaxed a bit in 2000 and not taken himself and his presidential ambitions so seriously, he probably would have won the election. The man is not without appealing qualities (unlike Lurch, who has none, zero, zilch, nada). In any case, it seems to me that the only cure for Gore’s eternal sense of being out of sorts with himself and the universe is for him to be elected president.
However, there was another factor that drove Gore to defeat that may not have been curable: his leftism. The decision of this longtime member of the moderate Democratic Leadership Council to turn himself into a hyper-aggressive class warrior bellowing “I’ll fight for YOU! I’ll NEVER stop fighting for YOU! I want to fight for you SO BAD!” made it impossible for him to seem like a normal responsible man capable of leading the country. And I think the springs of that leftism come from deep within him. Or perhaps not. Perhaps the leftism is just another symptom of the overwrought mental state engendered by his primal, unfulfilled compulsion to be president. Gore needs to be president in the same way that we might say of an overly intense young man that he needs a girlfriend. Email entry |