When former presidents attack

Carter may not be able to criticize Bush II, but Al Gore can.

He ascribes the failure to have a full-throated debate on Iraq back in 2002 -- when he spoke out against the looming war, to much nasty jeering from the right -- to the administration's decision to politicize the issue before the midterm elections, but also to "meekness" and "timidity" in both "the legislative branch of government" and in "the press corps."

"A lot of people were afraid of being accused of being unpatriotic," he says. "One of the symptoms of this problem -- the diminishing role for reason, fact and logic -- is that what rushes in to fill the vacuum are extreme partisanship, ideology, fundamentalism and extreme nationalism."

If the Bush administration came to mind as you read those words, Gore wouldn't object. Historians who need a catalogue of what went wrong after, oh, Dec. 12, 2000, the day of a certain U.S. Supreme Court decision, will find it all in his book.

Gore, so gracious after that unfortunate court ruling, lets it rip against Bush on Iraq, civil liberties, global warming and much else. Gore writes of "something deeply troubling about President Bush's relationship to reason, his disdain for facts, and his lack of curiosity. . . ." [sic]

That sentiment will speak to the multitudes disgusted with the Bush presidency -- and draw vituperation from the same people who accused Gore of trying to "steal" the 2000 election simply because he wanted Florida's votes recounted.

Meanwhile, did Michiko Kakutani read Gore's book, The Assault on Reason, or just do a word search for "Bush?" Because from what I understand (I haven't read the book, but I intend to), one of the main points is the news media's role in the dumbing down of American politics, forcusing on "the cosmetic," as he said to Sawyer yesterday. And no news outlet committed a greater offence against reason during the 2000 election than Kakutani's own New York Times. But the role of the Times and other purveyors of established opinion go unmentioned in her review this morning. I look forward to Somerby's reaction. Especially regarding this:

And yet for all its sharply voiced opinions, “The Assault on Reason” turns out to be less a partisan, election-cycle harangue than a fiercely argued brief about the current Bush White House that is grounded in copiously footnoted citations from newspaper articles, Congressional testimony and commission reports — a brief that is as powerful in making its points about the implications of this administration’s policies as the author’s 2006 book, “An Inconvenient Truth,” was in making its points about the fallout of global warming.

This volume moves beyond its criticisms of the Bush administration to diagnose the ailing condition of America as a participatory democracy — low voter turnout, rampant voter cynicism, an often ill-informed electorate, political campaigns dominated by 30-second television ads, and an increasingly conglomerate-controlled media landscape — and it does so not with the calculated, sound-bite-conscious tone of many political-platform-type books, but with the sort of wonky ardor that made both the book and movie versions of “An Inconvenient Truth” so bluntly effective.

Ah, yes. Bluntly effective. And yet, Ms. Kakutani had a different take on a previous book by Al, Earth in the Balance. Written in 1992, it was considered "brilliant" at the time, and was evidence that no one in Washington better understood or could articulate the peril we were facing because of our own actions against the environment. But in 2000, Kakutani, in Somberby's words, "had a different take."

Everyone knew about Earth in the Balance. Everyone knew that Earth “contain[ed] a great deal of valuable, clearly explained scientific information” combined with “a strong thread of values and ethics.” But soon thereafter, the 90s began—and as Hemingway self-pityingly said, “the rich came into our lives.” Their interests were driven along by their simpering tribunes—and by their hatred for the Clintons. By 1999, they were using their loathsome TV “news” programs to say that the Clintons were multiple murderers. And they were using their vicious “book reviewers” to say that Al Gore was a nut. At the Times, Gore’s “results” were no longer “impressive.” Their most damaged concubine, Maureen Dowd, was in the midst of her series of columns in which she portrayed Gore (“a little crazy”) conducting conversations with his bald spot. (There were six such crackpot columns in all.) And then, in December, Michiko Kakutani took over. My, how different Gore’s book now seemed—on page one of the debauched New York Times.

Kakutani’s lengthy, front-page report concerned the books written by five White House hopefuls. She devoted roughly 800 words to Earth in the Balance. Her message? Al Gore is a nut.

Sorry. As far as we can tell, Kakutani’s report isn’t available on-line, except behind the New York Times’ wall. But then again, if we were the Times, we’d want to hide this nasty hit-piece too. Kakutani’s treatment of Gore is a grisly reminder of the political culture of the late 1990s, as played out by the fatuous class which we still were describing as a “press corps.” It explains how George Bush ended up in the White House; it explains why the U.S. is now in Iraq. The Times set out to massacre Gore; it massacred your nation’s interests instead. We think you should remember Kakutani’s remarkable work if you see Gore on stage Sunday night.

Here's the link (sorry, Time$elect), from (actually) November 22, 1999:

Vice President Al Gore emerges from ''Earth in the Balance'' (Plume), his 1992 book about the environment, as the quintessential A-student who has belatedly discovered New Age psychobabble. Like his speeches, his book veers between detailed policy assessments (predictably illustrated with lots of charts and graphs) and high-decibel outbursts of passion, between energetically researched historical disquisitions and loony asides about ''inner ecology'' and ''spiritual triangulation'' -- asides that may help explain his curious affinity with his feminist consultant, Naomi Wolf.

One of his book's main themes concerns the mind-body dichotomy and the perils of a ''disembodied intellect,'' and yet strangely mechanistic images repeatedly surface in its pages. In one chapter, he describes the Constitution as ''a blueprint for an ingenious machine that uses pressure valves and compensating forces to achieve a dynamic balance between the needs of the individual and the needs of the community.'' In another, he argues that people divide most tasks into ''two conceptual halves'' and ''assign each half to opposite sides of the machine our body resembles.''

''At breakfast this morning,'' Mr. Gore writes, ''I consolidated my grapefruit with my left hand to keep it from moving on the plate and then manipulated it with my right hand, first by cutting portions away from the whole with a knife, then by eating them with a spoon.''

It was exactly that type of twaddle -- more concern for Gore's "psychobabble" than the fact that he was concerned with these issues decades before anyone else in Congress -- that put the idiot in the White House that we have now. It played along with the script -- Gore was a bit of a nut, "ozone man," a wonky drone, etc., etc. Nor did she mention in her hit piece, that Gore's book was not a "campaign book" which was the case for all the other books she compared it to (by Bradley, McCain, and Bush).

You can bet, should Gore decide to run, our political pundits (and Kakutani, despite her camouflage as a book reviewer, is very much a pundit at the Times) will most certainly turn on him again, assaulting reason once again.