A vice presidential and presidential first

Less than ten years after authoring the first (and certainly by far the most) passionate public kiss ever planted by a U.S. vice president or presidential nominee on his wife, a kiss in which he looked less like a loving husband than like Jack the Ripper seizing his prey, Al Gore has announced another presidential / vice presidential first: he and his wife Tipper, who have been married for 40 years, are separating. At the time it seemed, and now seems confirmed, that the kiss was a desperate instance of what Gertrude in Hamlet called “protesting too much.”

Or, as I said earlier today on a different matter, emotional extremes tend to turn into their opposite.

Also, while the kiss was intended to demonstrate that the Gores, unlike the Clintons, had a real marriage, the Gores’ marriage is now, ironically, ending, while the Clintons’, for what it’s worth, continues.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 01, 2010 06:28 PM | Send