Re: Election - you should delete this, probably

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Most of this story was true, it seems, except the above statement.  If he was a uniter, he would have met with Al buddy PRIOR to the final result of this election being discerned, as Al had proposed.  Frankly, I'm not anxious to have Trent Lott, Tom Delay, and GW Bush run the country.  I think we'll be turning the clock back 20 years to see lots and lots of money being diverted to get us ready to go to war... and running the national debt up through the ceiling so that we can be prepared for war with the Chinese.

Al has a lot of weaknesses.  Thinking that you have to be a macho man to be a leader is not one of them.   The author is correct--on initial examination he doesn't have the charisma to be a great leader.  Neither did FDR...

I believe Al has been very Presidential in his speeches since this hotly contested battle became a nightmare two+ weeks ago.  Too bad we can't get their wives interviewed more often--personally I kind of liked the idea of getting two great leaders for the price of one (with Hillary and Bill).

If G Dubya DOES become the next President of the US, and if he has to run against Hillary four years later, I think it could be an exciting race.  Unfortunately for Al, I believe that if the party had had a chance to pick Hillary as their candidate THIS election, the party might have carried Tennessee and Arkansas.   And, maybe with Hillary as President we'd finally get that national health care plan to fly...

(Still looking for info on wintering over Hostas in a greenhouse.  One area of concern is the wide fluctuations in temperature during a 24 hour period.  Perhaps I should be pulling shade cloth up over the greenhouse to limit the 40+ degree swings.  Could be an interesting experiment, however, to add more info to the wintering over database.  Just don't want it to be an entry about what does NOT work).  

Andrew Lietzow
 
 
 

Beth Arnold wrote:

Gore Can't Heal the Hurt

By Richard Cohen

Friday , November 24, 2000 ; Page A43

I voted for Al Gore. I did so because I have known him since he was a congressman from Tennessee. I admire his intellect, his seriousness of purpose, his capacity for hard work and study, his political values, his experience and his knowledge. That being said, I now think that under current circumstances he would not be the right man for the presidency. If I could, I would withdraw my vote. In the terminology of the moment, put me down as a hanging chad.

I still think precisely as I have about Gore. But those "current circumstances" I just mentioned change everything. Given the present bitterness, given the angry irresponsible charges being hurled by both camps, the nation will be in dire need of a conciliator, a likable guy who will make things better and not worse. That man is not Al Gore. That man is George W. Bush.

Bush has incessantly proclaimed himself as that sort of guy--"a uniter, not a divider." The tendency is to dismiss that sort of chest-thumping as campaign nonsense, but in Bush's case it appears to be true. After all, the Bush boomlet began among his fellow Republican governors, each of whom probably thought the next president should be none other than himself.

So it says something about Bush that the governors were able to coalesce around him. Some of these governors knew Bush quite well, some hardly at all, but the fact remains that they all seemed to genuinely like the guy and respected his leadership abilities.

You hear the same sort of thing from people who worked with Bush in private enterprise. I talked with one of them once, a Democrat who disagreed with Bush on many issues. Yet he, too, praised Bush's leadership abilities, his talent for bringing order out of chaos and for reaching some sort of consensus. That man's testimony impressed me. His disagreements with Bush were real, his admiration for him profound.

Gore, on the other hand, has little of those abilities. His own party is sore at him for taking the one-two punch of peace and prosperity and running a race that is still not concluded. His performance was as erratic as his uniform-of-the-day: earth tones on Tuesday, business suit on Wednesday. The country sensed that either he did not know himself, or what he did know the country would not like.

Gore is hardly a political natural. He appears stiff, robotic, insincere even when he is not, and paradoxically unable to mask his ambition. He is the intimate of few people, almost no one's good buddy, and not comfortable--or is it just plain not good?--on television. But TV is as essential to the modern presidency as a white horse was to monarchs of old.

Could Al Gore rally the nation? Maybe. Could he go over the heads of Congress and get the country behind him? Maybe. I think, though, that Bush would be better at those things--and better, too, at restraining GOP Dobermans like Reps. Tom DeLay and J.C. Watts Jr. At the same time, it's not likely that a President Bush would be able to appoint Supreme Court justices ideologically similar to those he says he admires, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Simply put, he ain't got the votes.

John F. Kennedy won by a hair and under questionable circumstances, and yet his presidency was never considered illegitimate. Within a relatively short time, his approval rating hit an astounding 83 percent. But Kennedy was a man of manifest political talents, not to mention charisma. Bush is no Kennedy on a lot of levels--particularly his lack of intellectual curiosity--but Gore is almost Kennedy's antithesis. No one has ever applied the word "grace" to him.

I realize that one-term presidents can become two-term presidents, so it is not just the next year that matters. I realize, too, that Bush and Gore have real differences in their approach to government--differences that matter greatly to many people.

But what matters at the moment is the moment itself--a mere tick of the historic clock that could, if things continue, just stop it dead where it is. History does not guarantee that things will be as they have been. The first and most daunting task of the next president is not a tax bill or a Social Security plan but--as it was when Jerry Ford succeeded Richard Nixon--the healing of the country. I voted for Gore because he was the better man for the job. I can't help thinking that he no longer is.

© 2000 The Washington Post

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