At what cost: the loss of integrity? - International Social/Political

The oddity that is attempting to replace traditional Australian working values is a conservative, Christian dork from the parochial State of Queensland, Kevin (custard face) Rudd. The current prime minister John Howard can be accused of many things including war crimes but he can never be accused of abandoning the ideological platform of his party – in that sense he is a purist!

Howard belongs to the conservative school of laissez-faire capitalism, free market economics known today by the misleading terms, Economic Rationalism; however, a cursory analysis reveals little rationality in this unsustainable singularly (profit) driven philosophy!

Nevertheless, John Howard worships at this filthy (lucre) temple of Moloch. Free market capitalists believe that everything finds balance and is served by market forces; the less the government intervenes the better, in fact, government should facilitate the needs of the Corporate sector at the expense of everything else; in that regard Howard obliges to the letter.

Howard has taken non-interventionism to the extreme by allowing a shortage of bananas (due to storm activity) to push the cost of an Australian staple food to an unholy $13/kilo! In view of the fact that Australia is surrounded by cheap banana producing nations, Howard’s non-interventionism (failure to import) is unforgivable as is the huge deprivation unnecessarily inflicted on the Australian public. But Howard maintained his integrity; he did not intervene when intervention was clearly warranted.

The most costly areas in which Howard has not intervened are the environment and water resource management; the reason is simple, these critical areas offer no profit at present. Factors critical to the tenability of human and other forms of life are irrelevant to economic ‘rationalists’ if ‘monetary’ gain is not on offer – inverting value systems to this extent is not only foolhardy it is suicidal.

In view of the above factors it is a curiosity that the opposition has found it difficult to depose a pathological liar, war criminal, destroyer of Australian values, incompetent economic/environmental manager, lackey to foreign powers, a person who displays no national character whatsoever, a reprehensible coward, one who surrenders citizens to foreign torturers and is willing to take political advantage of hapless victims, a slave to self-serving corporate bosses, one who allows personal debt levels to skyrocket when the corporate sector has never made higher profits etc, etc. The qualities this prime minister manifests are offensive to all honest human beings yet the opposition finds it difficult to trap a rodent!

The opposition leader allows the prime minister to stigmatise and portray the union movement as a criminal pariah organisation and yet the opposition misses the opportunity to contrast the profits of Transnationals and the salary of Corporate directors with the rest of the population – wherefore this ‘oversight’? The fact that hundreds of millions of dollars derived from Australia’s natural wealth goes offshore seems not to interest the opposition. What is more ‘criminal’, raping and exploiting the nation to the tune of billions or a few million in wage increases for average workers?

Kevin Rudd, bereft of an ideology and principals from which to launch a victorious attack finds himself instead emulating his opponent by claiming that he too is a conservative! Then why Kevin should anyone vote for you when Howard is by far the more conservative? Faced with a challenge to reprimand a colourful union leader for inappropriate remarks, Rudd took the reactive instead of the active approach by divorcing himself from the movement and demanding the resignation of the unionist. Perhaps Mr. Rudd should join the conservatives and put an end to his identity crisis! Also, faced with the children overboard fraud, the waterfront debacle, the 'aluminium tubing' lies that involved Australia in a criminal war – Rudd remains bereft of material to attack (CRUCIFY) the war criminal, John Howard.

Australian unions do not have the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians on their hands yet the opposition allows slurs from Howard and his criminal government. Arresting Howard, Downer and Ruddock for their active support and complicity in crimes that resulted in a holocaust would surely amount to material for a moral attack on the government yet custard-face Rudd, surrounded with incriminating, irrefutable evidence is unable to develop a winning strategy!

The forthcoming election should see Howard slaughtered but without an ideology or philosophical platform Rudd is appearing more like a vacillating, shallow wannabe! Howard is not the clever politician the opposition imagines, he is simply a disgusting, lying, criminal coward with the blood of innocents on his hands. The fact that Rudd has no ideological base is becoming problematic. It wouldn’t be surprising to see Rudd shredded over this very shortcoming. A contender must stand for something larger than himself!

Addendum:
In contrast to the parochial nature of Australian politics there exists a politician that has not missed a beat, picture perfect so far. The lateral approach of creating the space, the agenda and forcing an issue of his choosing onto the world political arena is a stroke of genius. Making a movie then allowing the media and others to do all the hard work while his opponents, including candidates from his own party run themselves dry, is an effort worthy of the best political strategists.

With perfect timing and when his opponents’ veins are popping from their foreheads, Al Gore, if he chooses to run, is a walk-up winner -- ‘play it again, Al’, what a ‘stroke’!

Condemn progressives for voting enthusiastically for Democrats and the inevitable response is something like "just imagine how much worse voting for Republicans would be." Similarly, many true conservatives and Libertarians see voting for Republicans as a necessary evil. With many progressives regretting giving Democrats a majority in Congress and many conservatives regretting putting George W. Bush in the White House, it is timely to refute lesser evil logic.

Inevitably, lesser evil voters face personal disappointment and some shame. Politicians that receive lesser evil votes do not perform according to the values and principles that the lesser evil voter holds dear. These voters must accept responsibility for putting ineffective, dishonest and corrupt politicians in office. Though they may be lesser evils, they remain evils.

All too often lesser evil voters avoid shame and regret and prevent painful cognitive dissonance by deluding themselves that the politician they helped put in office is really not so bad after all. Corrosive lesser evil voting erodes one's principles as pragmatism replaces idealism. This makes the next cycle of lesser evil voting easier.

Lesser evil voting helps stabilize America's two-party duopoly that greatly restricts true political competition. Third party and independent candidates - and minor Democratic and Republican candidates in primaries - are defeated by massive numbers of lesser evil voters. Despite authentically having the political goals that mesh with many voters on the left or right, these minor "best" candidates fall victim to lesser evil voting. Lesser evil voters are addicted to a self-fulfilling prophesy. They think "If I vote for a minor candidate they will lose anyway." They ensure this outcome though their lesser evil voting. The truly wasted vote is the unprincipled lesser evil vote.

Effective representative democracy requires politically engaged citizens that vote. Lesser-evil voters support the current two-party system with its terribly low voter turnout and chronic dishonesty and corruption. Lesser evil voters help put into office disappointing politicians, not the best people that would restore American democracy and show more citizens that voting is valuable. Lesser evil voters demonstrate the validity of turned-off citizens' view that it really does not matter which major party wins office.

Politicians knowingly market themselves to lesser evil voters by constructing phony sales pitches, especially to certain audiences outside of their more certain base constituents. Democrats make themselves look more progressive than they really are, and Republicans make themselves look more conservative than they really are. Lesser evil voters are phony, and they produce a phony political system. Lesser evil voters contribute mightily to the travesty of our political system that no sane person respects and has confidence in.

Lesser evil voting demonstrates the worst aspects of political compromise. This is the common cause of terrible laws. When citizens surrender so much of what they truly believe in, they enable compromise politicians to create bad public policy that, in the end, satisfies very few people and puts band-aids on severe problems. Lesser evil voters concede victory to the other side - the side they view as the worse alternative because the people they vote for will not stand up for what is right and necessary. Think Iraq war. Even when their lesser evil side wins, they do not have the principled positions that would prevent awful compromises, often in the name of bipartisanship that is a clever way to justify our corrupt two-party mafia.

Lesser evil voters deride the alternatives of not voting or voting for minor candidates. The outcome should the "other" side win is deemed unacceptable. There is worse and there is worst. The core problem with lesser evil voters is that they are short term thinkers. They fail to see the repeated long term consequence of their style of voting - a system over many election cycles that persists in delivering suboptimal results. The "good" outcome in the current election (from their perspective) is the enemy of the "better" solution in the longer term (from an objective perspective). The better solution is major reform that will never happen as long as lesser evil voting persists.

Understand this: Lesser evil voting is not courageous. It is cowardly surrender to the disappointing two-party status quo. Lesser evil voters should trade regret for pride by voting for candidates they really think are the best. Voters in this presidential primary season have some remarkable opportunities to transform fine minor candidates into competitive major candidates - more honest and trustworthy people like Ron Paul, Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich, for example.

Finally, the deadly decline of American democracy results in large measure from lesser evil voters electing lesser evil politicians. When virtually no elected public official is there because most voters have embraced his clear principled, trustworthy positions we get a government that is easily corrupted by corporate and other moneyed interests. We get what we have now. And if you are dissatisfied with that, then reconsider the wisdom of lesser evil voting. We will only get the best government by voting for the best candidates. Otherwise, we get what we deserve and what the power elites prefer.

Joel S. Hirschhorn is the author of Delusional Democracy (www.delusionaldemocracy.com) and a founder of Friends of the Article V Convention (www.foavc.org).

© 2007 Joel S. Hirschhorn

For the organizers of Al Gore's one and only gig in Northern California promoting his new book, it was a little like that children's classic, "A Fish Out of Water," in which a boy overfeeds his goldfish and it grows and grows, outswelling its bowl, then a vase, then a bathtub.

Authors tour the country constantly, hawking their books. You see the fliers in bookshop windows. At night, in a space cleared for the purpose, you see that spectacle: three or four rows of folding chairs arranged to face the podium where a hopeful figure poses, looking so alone, scanning the empty seats while pretending not to. Bookstore owners have told me that attendance at author events has dwindled lately. Some stores around the San Francisco Bay Area, long hailed as America's second-biggest reading hub, have stopped hosting readings altogether.

Even so, planners at Book Passage -- an independent store in tiny Marin County -- expected a decent turnout for Gore. Ambitiously, they decided to charge for tickets to Wednesday night's event and co-sponsor it with Dominican University, a small, nearby Catholic school, and stage it in its 850-seat auditorium. A few weeks in advance, the forthcoming lecture was announced rather quietly on Book Passage's website and on a Dominican site. Within two days, the auditorium was sold out. The waiting list was hundreds long. Stunned, the planners chose yet another venue, the sprawling 2,000-seat Marin Civic Center. Tickets went back on sale. Two days later, the Civic Center was sold out too -- at forty bucks a pop, for what was scheduled to be a 20-minute talk. Again, the waiting list extended over the horizon.

Movie-star proportions, clearly. But Al Gore is modern politics' movie star, not in the metaphorical sense.

Like parts of Los Angeles, Marin County is one of those places whose residents would rather die than admit that they're awestruck by celebrity. It's the sort of semirural, estate-dotted sward to which rockstars and rebels-who-got-rich retire, and according to Forbes, it includes one of the five most expensive zip codes in the country.

And it turned out in droves for Gore.

The title of his new book, "The Assault on Reason" (Penguin Press, 2007, $25.95) is really just another way of phrasing the title of his previous book, "An Inconvenient Truth" (Rodale Books, 2006, $21.95), which accompanies the film of the same name which, of course, vaulted Gore to literal movie-stardom. Though "The Assault on Reason" is meant to allude to lies told by lying governmental liars about everything from uranium enrichment to wiretaps to emergency preparedness and "An Inconvenient Truth" concerns climate change. Both titles rail against violence done to some clear, intrinsic, real-world factuality, which -- as Gore said on Wednesday evening, patting his black-suited chest, "resonates in the human heart."

He would speak feelingly that night about "ripples" marring the media that "make the surface distorted" so that "the clarity of vision is ruined." One clear thing, he would tell the crowd, is "the 99 percent certainty that we're facing the greatest threat" imaginable in climate change. "Yet our leaders are dilly-dallying" about it. "How dare they?" he demanded, to thunderous applause.

But that was later.

I took public transit from San Francisco to the Marin Civic Center not by choice but by necessity, as I neither drive nor own a car (which I guess, since I could, since I actually have a license, is a choice). For others it would have been a choice, even a novelty. Braving the clamor and buying a ticket to see the world's most outspoken climate-awareness advocate, you might muse about the best way to reach and depart the lecture hall. You just might. In that same fist-to-forehead way you might rethink hosting an AA meeting at a bar, or hanging paper Halloween skulls at a funeral, which this kind of was. If you believe Gore -- who that night would describe evidence of impending ecological doom as being "so clear, it's so massive, it's so obvious" -- then the prospect of joining those rush-hour throngs behind the wheel might be -- well, even more embarrassing than looking starstruck.

For the record, from San Francisco's Transbay Terminal, the 80 Golden Gate Transit bus crosses the city, then the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin, where at the downtown San Rafael transit center, bus No. 45 climbs suburban streets and a wide, wooded scimitar of hill-road, stopping at the Civic Center.

Just so you'll know. Like, for next time? Because there was no one else on that big silvery No. 45 when it reached the Civic Center but me.

I rolled my eyes at eager lecture-goers rushing toward the hall clad in leather jackets and carrying leather bags. One woman even had a snakeskin clutch. You've gotta pick your battles in this world.

The ovations began the moment Gore strode onstage. Soft lighting in the auditorium caught the tweeds, the silks, the suede, the pearls and gold and jade and lovely shoes and creamy complexions and frosted hair. Tanned pinkish-brown, the author had just arrived from Beverly Hills, where he'd kicked off his book tour at the Wilshire Theatre the night before. His palms pressed together and half-bows, as he thanked the crowd, might have been namastes -- that traditional Indian gesture of reverence.

"I can feel that," he said. "There are days when I need that."

Wags in the crowd held up placards saying PLEASE RUN. (For president, that is.)

"Millions of people, and I'm one of them, have the uneasy feeling that something's gone wrong in the United States," the ex-vice president said, spurring applause. "Why was our beloved country so shockingly vulnerable to such crass manipulation?" Guy knows how to work a stage. Deploring the Dark Ages' illiteracy that we can no longer use as an excuse for incurious ignorance, he invoked Mahatma Gandhi and African proverbs and Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Paine, whose 1776 pamphlet Common Sense Gore dubbed the "Harry Potter of the 18th century." He quoted George Washington forbidding his troops to torture Hessian captives. He said that the world changed forever when literacy spread and "people found that they could use knowledge as a source of influence" -- and that the first printed book was the Gutenberg Bible, though some might argue and say it was a copy of the Diamond Sutra published in China in 868.

The exponential spread of knowledge led populations out of superstition and into discussions about human rights, he said, which in turn led to America: "We take it for granted that our country operates, at least in theory, on the basis of the rule of reason" and "on our capacity to reason together." But that was before TV and the Bush administration. "Why is it," Gore roared, "that facts, truth, knowledge and reason play such a minor role in the functioning of our democracy?"

He has his suspicions. The flow of information, and the manner in which it is displayed, are controlled by oligarchs who, as Gore writes in "The Assault on Reason," possess "less interest than any previous administration in sharing the truth" with us. The problem, he asserts, and the reason we are veering ever closer toward history's steepest cliff, is the leadership's insatiable "impulse to power." Thumping his heart again, Gore told the crowd that this lust, albeit lethal, is neither madness nor even evil but a mere "sign of humanity."

Now the funny thing about philosophical edicts, or should we say the funny thing about philosophical edicts now, is that figures at opposite ends of the political spectrum can say the exact same thing at virtually the same time. They can say it in the exact same way and even mean it in the exact same way. Al Gore might have no more vocal antagonist on earth these days than conservative talk show host Michael Savage, who regularly denounces climate change as a false crisis caused not by humans but by natural shifts that have always happened every few millennia. Yet Savage also rails regularly against George W. Bush. Calling Bush the worst president in history, paraphrasing a quote from British historian Lord Acton, Savage loves to shout into the mic: "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." He and Gore could shake hands and exchange hearty smiles over this point. Coincidentally, Savage lives in Marin County, a few miles from where the lecture was held. The pair could raise glasses together and call it a day.

And that's what's so weird about these electrified times. Gore can intone with "99 percent certainty that we're facing the greatest threat" ... and that the threat in question is climate change. Yet Savage and his ilk would complete that sentence with something else entirely: terrorism, most likely, or immigration. Gore can ask, "Why was our beloved country so shockingly vulnerable to such crass manipulation?" Savage and his ilk would start that sentence with the same nine words, then end it with: "a terrorist attack?"

It's like a game of Mad Libs. To each side, each version is glaringly true, with that soul-wracking resonance that makes Gore gaze intently into an audience and thump his heart. Some parts of both versions even totally overlap. But Gore's imprecations that we begin "the hard work of rebuilding a conversation of democracy," drawing on a cosmic "truthforce" that will help us "see together what the best choices are," are -- to borrow a word that he used over and over that evening -- troubling. Because history has so splintered and subdivided us that the truth and reason he hails in principle can in practice be as individual as -- well, your eyes and mine. Postmodernism has labored away for impassioned decades convincing Americans that nothing is objective, that nothing is ultimately, absolutely true.

Which makes me want to laugh and cry when Gore assails "our failure to see clearly." I want to see what he sees. Or some of it. Or do I? Truth decay, as it is called, dissolves our trust in each other. In anything.

Afterwards, attendees streamed through the doors, most of them bearing autographed books, some waving yellow signs printed with "Run, Al Run." Because of the font, and because only the first letter of each word was upper-case, the signs could be misread at first glance as "Run AI Run" -- AI being "American Idol" fans' standard acronym for that show, and Wednesday night's episode being the season finale. At that moment, or somewhere between right then and the transit center, 29.5 million Americans would see whether they had elected twentysomething argyle-sweatered beatboxer Blake of the pert bottom and do-me eyes or 17-year-old devout-Christian plus-size pageant queen Jordin. Because to 29.5 million Americans, that was truth.

It was time to catch the last bus back.

Anneli Rufus is the author of several books, including "Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto."

© 2007 Independent Media Institute

In recent days, the word used more and more frequently to describe Hillary Clinton's march to the Democratic presidential nomination has been "inevitable." She consistently leads public opinion polls across the country by a good 10 points over her nearest rival. Hollywood, after a brief infatuation with Barack Obama, is now, according to the Los Angeles Times, consolidating its support behind the junior senator from New York. Rupert Murdoch employee Peter Chernin extracted a cool $850,000 from wealthy Angelenos for the former first lady at a recent event in his home. A few days later, she was endorsed by the King of Hollywood himself -- Steven Spielberg.

I wonder if Mr. Spielberg will change his mind when Al Gore declares his candidacy this fall.

I have never met Mr. Gore. I make no claim to any inside knowledge on this question. I have no idea whether he's gaining or losing weight.

But I think he's coming.

I think he's going to find it impossible to resist.

And I think progressives should get busy, right now, working to hasten the day.

Many Prefer Gore Over the Entire Democratic Field

I have been working on Democratic political campaigns, international policy analysis, and anti-nuclear advocacy for a couple of decades now -- usually finding myself on the left side of the room. So, although I was somehow left off the invitation list for the event at Mr. Chernin's, I have met a great many rank-and-file Democratic voters over the years. And -- like other political junkies -- I have been talking with them a lot recently about the 2008 presidential contest.

The majority of my Democratic friends have devoted most of their attentions to the three avowed front-runners -- Clinton, Obama, and John Edwards. Yet during the last six months or so, whenever I've asked them whom they would choose if they were choosing between four candidates -- Clinton, Obama, Edwards, and Al Gore -- probably 90 percent have told me, in a heartbeat, that they'd go for Gore.

So I've been thinking a bit about why that might be the case.

Gore v. Obama

When Democrats compare Al Gore to Barack Obama, they see someone with the same compelling charisma (at least now, if not in 2000), the same grass roots attraction, the same heart-over-head allure. Yet, it is beyond obvious to point out that Gore has almost infinitely superior experience in the national and international arenas. Obama, despite his manifest intelligence and palpable political gifts, still today has served less than two and a half years in the U.S. Senate, with stints as a state senator and a law professor before that. Al Gore -- who is only 13 years older than Obama -- has under his belt eight years in the House, eight years in the Senate, and eight years as vice president. Not to mention six and a half years since then as an amazingly effective environmental activist, worldwide, during which time "the Goracle" has become a cultural icon larger than mere politics.

Plus, you want to know the first thought that will spring into the minds of 90 percent of Obama supporters, the instant that Gore announces?

"Gore/Obama 2008."

Gore v. Edwards

When Democrats compare Al Gore to John Edwards, they see two political leaders who insist on talking about Big Ideas. Edwards, displaying what all progressives should applaud as a profile in political courage, has centered his second presidential campaign on the injustice of intractable inequality -- not only around the block but also around the world. (In a little-noticed remark during the South Carolina debate in April, he called for "making primary school education available to 100 million children worldwide.") And he has crafted arguably the most important single campaign sentence at this critical juncture in our history, when he calls upon Americans "to be patriotic about something other than war."

Gore, of course, has one or two Big Ideas of his own up his sleeve. He has spent the last quarter-century sounding the alarm on global climate change and environmental sustainability -- and has almost single-handedly willed it into mainstream public consciousness. And now, with his new book, The Assault on Reason, already number one on the New York Times best-seller list, he takes on the sustainability of our American democracy itself.

Yet when it comes to political and policy experience, the single term in the U.S. Senate served by Edwards, with no other prior or subsequent political offices held, provides a national and international affairs resume arguably as thin as Obama's.

Only a few still dispute that climate change and other environmental challenges pose the single greatest long-term threat to the viability of the human community. (I like to accompany that by saying that nuclear terror poses the single greatest immediate such threat.) In April 1993, the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity," from more than 1670 scientists including 104 Nobel laureates. "No more than one or a few decades remain," said the scientists, "before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished."

Now, 14 years later, almost as if on cue, leading atmospheric scientist James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, tells us that we probably have only two remaining election cycles to elect a president to undertake the kind of comprehensive programs that seriously addressing the climate crisis will demand. After that, it will probably be too late.

Gore v. Clinton

When Democrats compare Al Gore to Hillary Clinton, they see two political titans -- similar experience, similar gravitas, similar authority both to manage the labyrinthine federal government and to credibly represent the United States in the global arena.

But Hillary Clinton has always engendered bitter antipathies, like perhaps no other figure in American political life today. These come not only from the millions of Republicans who say they would "never" vote for her, but from much of the core left Democratic base as well. I've never quite figured out why so many on the right so loathe the Clintons. But many progressives read the June 4, 2007 cover story of The Nation magazine by Ari Berman, entitled "Hillary, Inc.," which detailed the intricate web of the senator's corporate connections. Much of the core left sees her as a centrist, an incrementalist, a triangulator, a hawk who would do little to challenge the unaccountable leviathan that Eisenhower's military/industrial complex has become, a DLC Democrat who favors caution over conviction, calculation over commitment.

And with both the intensity of feelings about the Bush legacy and the rise even just since the last presidential election of the "net roots," that core left today is quite substantial.

In addition, with Senator Clinton, the old chestnut about her ultimate "electability" seems destined to become her decisive variable. In a June 12 Los Angeles Times survey, Senator Clinton comes out 11 points ahead of any competitor to win the Democratic nomination. When matched up against Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani, however, Obama defeats Giuliani 46-41 percent, and Edwards defeats Giuliani 46- 43 percent. But Giuliani defeats Clinton by a whopping 49- 39 percent margin!

Several polls have consistently validated this result. Although a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll two weeks ago had Clinton over Giuliani 48-43 percent, three others by Gallup have had Giuliani over Clinton by an average of 5 points. This, despite some surveys reporting that voters favor a generic Democrat over a generic Republican by more than 20 points.

There is no way this does not become the defining issue for Democratic primary voters in the first three months of 2008.

Senator Clinton's healthy and enduring advantage in the polls clearly indicates that many Democrats do like her. But in their moment of truth in the privacy of the voting booth, primary voters who think highly of her may in the end not pull the lever for her. Why not? Think the opposite of what happened to John Kerry.

Remember how, in the first three months of 2004, millions of voters who did not adore Kerry voted for him anyway, because they said they saw him as the most "electable" Democratic candidate? (Some wags observed that Democratic voters were so intent on ejecting George Bush from the White House that they voted not for the candidate they liked, but for a candidate they believed others would like in November.) Four years later, we may see almost exactly the reverse phenomenon. Millions of voters who like Hillary Clinton may vote for someone else anyway, because they will conclude, regrettably, that she "cannot win" in November.

And there really is only one possible "someone else."

Gore v. the Rest

The other five declared Democratic candidates -- Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, and Bill Richardson -- offer a wealth of political experience and wisdom. All have advanced imaginative policy proposals that Americans would do well to study -- and the media would do well to illuminate.

Many friends on the hard left retain a deep affection for Kucinich, and his uncompromising, inspiring, and comprehensive vision of progressive peace patriotism. (Not to mention his vision of getting insurance companies and employers out of the health care business altogether, and replacing them with non-profit single-payer national health insurance -- "Medicare for All" -- the only plausible long-term solution to the health obstacle course that confronts not just 50 million uninsured, but virtually all Americans.)

A few of my colleagues in the anti-nuclear arena have even cheered a bit for Gravel, who tried desperately to inform viewers during the April South Carolina debate that all three of the Democratic front-runners, incredibly, have refused to take "off the table" a pre-emptive American first strike, with nuclear weapons, against the nation of Iran.

But it doesn't seem terribly likely that in the end any of these five will stand between the Hillary Clinton juggernaut and the "inevitability" of her nomination.

Gore and the War

Al Gore also distinguishes dramatically from several Democratic candidates on the issue that voters rate as the single most important -- in some polls by 20 percentage points.

Iraq.

In September 2002, the former vice president spoke before the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, excoriating the very idea that our country might be about to launch a pre-emptive, illegal, unilateral, unwarranted, and unwise march of folly in Mesopotamia. "The president is proclaiming a new uniquely American right to preemptively attack whomsoever he may deem represents a potential future threat," said the veteran of Viet Nam about the veteran of the Texas Air National Guard in September of 2002. "The administration has not said much of anything to clarify its idea of what would follow regime change, or the degree of engagement that it is prepared to accept for the United States in Iraq in the months and years after a regime change has taken place. ... If what America represents to the world is leadership in a commonwealth of equals, then our friends are legion. If what we represent to the world is an empire, then it is our enemies who will be legion."

Those words were spoken a month before Senator Clinton, in voting on the defining war and peace resolution of our time, spoke the word "aye."

Gore, the Critic of Contemporary American Democracy

I saw Al Gore speak on May 22nd, at the Wilshire Theatre in Beverly Hills, in the inaugural event of his tour for The Assault on Reason. In a live on-stage conversation with Harry Shearer, the contrast between Gore's sheer intellectual firepower and that of the man who (didn't) beat him in 2000, the man who I recently heard on the radio, with my own ears, say, "the literacy level of our high school students are appalling," was, well, appalling. Gore traced the path from the Middle Ages to our own constitution. He discussed the relevance of Marshall McLuhan to our present predicaments, and the overwhelming dominance today of images over ideas. He lamented that the "well-informed citizenry" envisioned by our framers has degenerated into a "well-amused audience." He issued a plea for all Americans to work to restore to our public square a rational policy debate within a democratic marketplace of ideas.

On a more prosaic and immediate level, he delivered a blistering critique of the Bush Administration's Iraq debacle, its inaction on climate change, its obeisance to the rich and the powerful and the corporate elite, and its casting aside the long-standing American ethos against torture -- first insisted upon, he reminded us, by George Washington. And he made my own anti-nuclear heart beat more quickly when he delivered a one-word verdict on Bush's plans to build a new generation of nuclear weapons while hectoring countries like Iran and North Korea (and likely soon others) to forego nuclear weapons.

"Insane."

Gore 2000 and Gore 2008

Oh, there is one more asset that Al Gore brings to the table. Something unique only to him. In 2000 -- even with Ralph Nader siphoning 2.8 million votes from just over 100 million ballots cast -- the sitting vice president still beat the sitting governor of Texas nationwide by more than half a million votes. In addition, a great deal of evidence indicates that more Floridians tried to vote for Al Gore than for George Bush -- which means, of course, that Gore actually won in the Electoral College as well.

But, at least according to five Supreme Court justices, George Bush won and Al Gore lost.

That means that millions of Americans, even many who might not necessarily adore the former vice president, hold a rough recollection that in 2000, Al Gore had something taken away from him that he rightfully earned. And deserved. And won.

And that is why the "RAG" bumper sticker, in itself, will be worth ten million votes next time around, for this candidate and this candidate alone. First in the primaries, then again in the general election.

What is the "RAG" bumper sticker?

"RE-ELECT AL GORE."

Gore and the Human Future

Three years ago, in an excruciating effort to wrest the presidency back, Democrats nominated a candidate who focused virtually all his attentions on a hypothetical few million undecided "swing voters," rather than on the seventy million eligible Americans who -- waiting in vain to hear some kind of big, inspiring, courageous vision -- did not even bother on Election Day to show up.

Surely, we're not going to let ourselves make the same mistake again.

On the night before he was elected president in 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy, speaking on the floor of the Boston Garden, said "I do not run for the office of the Presidency after fourteen years in the Congress with any expectation that it is an empty or easy job. I run for the Presidency of the United States because it is the center of action. ... The kind of society we build, the kind of power we generate, the kind of enthusiasm that we incite, all this will tell whether, in the long run, darkness or light overtakes the world."

Is there any political figure in America today who can better restore our faith in the light than Al Gore? Is there anyone who would better pursue not just American national interests but also common human interests, who would call upon not just our national patriotism but also our planetary patriotism, who might deliver a speech from the floor of the Congress not on the "State of the Union" but on the "State of the Earth?" Is there any better way the forces of peace and justice and hope can evoke the better angels of our nature than to mobilize, now, together, to demand an Al Gore candidacy?

Newshounds may remember Trent Lott's catastrophic faux pas in 2002, when he opined at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party that if America had elected the former segregationist as president in 1948, "we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years." My prescient colleague Gregory Wright, of the venerable Southern California Americans for Democratic Action (socalada.org), tells me he fears that at Al Gore's 100th birthday party, coincidentally in 2048, in a Tennessee by then considerably closer to the shoreline of both the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, someone -- perhaps someone not yet today even born -- will remark that if America had elected this man as president in 2000, "we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years."

Of course, no one will need to say that in 2048, if we elect Al Gore president in 2008.

Tad Daley is a veteran political advisor and nuclear policy analyst. He has served as a policy aide to the late U.S. Senator Alan Cranston, as National Issues Director for the 2004 presidential campaign of Congressman Dennis Kucinich, as a co-founder of Progressive Democrats of America (pdamerica.org) and as a member of the international policy department at the RAND Corporation think tank before all that. He writes frequently for commondreams.org, truthdig.com, huffingtonpost.com, and our own alternet.org. He lives in Los Angeles.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute

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