35 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
He Really Will Say (and Do) Anything to Get Elected, September 27, 2000
This review is from: Al Gore: A User's Manual (Hardcover)
Al Gore: A User's Manual By Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair Verso 2000 $23.00
He Really Will Say (and Do) Anything to Get Elected A Review By Michael Donnelly
Al Gore is on the cusp of becoming the first American president who grew up in a hotel suite (rent-free courtesy of a relative who owned the hotel), ordering breakfast from room service and riding a limo to his private school for the elite. Like everything else about Gore, this reality clashes with the public myth of the hard-working, pig shit-shoveling, mule team-plowing farm boy from Carthage, Tennessee.
Authors Cockburn and St. Clair's excellent dissection of Gore's public myth is a must read for any progressive - especially those who continue to bleat the fear-inflating nonsense that the wagons must be circled around Gore as George W. Bush is an oil-drenched, military thrall out to roll back worker's rights, environmental protections and a woman's right to choose. This, the first thorough examination of Gore's 25-year public career from a Left (or any for that matter) perspective shows that those very feared rollbacks have been the bases of the chameleon Gore's slimy rise.
In Al Gore: A User's Manual, we learn that Gore, himself, has been a major Defense department sycophant. After a politically-motivated short tour of Vietnam as an Army reporter complete with constant bodyguard (note to Creedence: he was a Senator's son), Gore, once in Congress (how he got there another great story) became one of the Pentagon's most trusted water carriers. The hawk Gore virtually invented the Midgetman missile, midwifed the MX missile, voted against every effort to cut the Defense budget, backed the invasion of Grenada, supported the contras and, then in what he called his "finest hour," voted for the Gulf War - only after shopping his vote on the very day of the debate to each side in order to secure the most favorable TV slot during the debate.
While in Congress, Al Gore was not only a hawk, but also a voice against homosexuals, whom he called "deviants." Gore also preposterously claims to have always "supported a woman's right to choose" when, in fact, he has an 84% pro-life rating from National Right to Life, even stating that he believes in "the fetus' right to life" and voting for the Hyde amendment AND Rep. Mark Siljander's effort to undercut Roe v Wade.
The authors relate tale after tale of Gore's use of personal epiphanies to explain his beliefs. The book exposes how Gore used the death of his sister, Nancy, from smoking-related cancer as a prop, saying in 1996, "that is why until I draw my last breath, I will pour my heart and soul into the cause of protecting our children from the dangers of smoking." Seven years after her death, Gore was still on the Big Tobacco dole - accepting tobacco money and accepting government subsidies for the tobacco he still grew on his Tennessee farm. Though Al and Tipper once smoked a lot of pot, Gore now opposes its use, even for medical purposes, ignoring how his sister got relief from chemo primarily from the beneficial effects of smoking marijuana!
Other family events become similar props. A pedestrian/auto accident where his son, Al III, was hit on the streets of Baltimore was similarly milked for political use. After lying that his son (who fully recovered) was down in the street unconscious on the verge of death (two nurses who happened by say Al III never lost consciousness), Gore claims that it became yet another of his epiphanies and dedicated himself to being a more present dad. In the end, however, he soon sequestered himself away from Tipper and kids in his family's old hotel suite to pen "Earth on the Balance."
It is here, in Gore's supposed reputation as an environmentalist, that his penchant for lying and double-dealing is most obvious. The man, who wrote that protection of the environment should be the "organizing principle" of government, in his political career, has done nothing of the sort. The authors point out that it was Green Al who first used opened the door to weakening the Nixon-signed Endangered Species Act by creating the "god squad" to in order to advance the Tellico Dam in his home state over concerns about the dam's effect on the Snail Darter. At the same time he was a foremost, even fanatical, proponent of the Clinch River breeder reactor.
In 1992, candidate Gore promised to oppose the WTI hazardous waste burner in East Liverpool, Ohio. Once elected, it became the first environmental promise, written at that, broken by the Clinton/Gore administration. Soon thereafter, Clinton and Gore came to the Pacific Northwest and forced the supine Big Greens, over the objections of local grassroots environmentalists, to drop an injunction against old growth logging that was issued by Reagan-appointee, Judge William Dwyer. Once Green Al left town, the ancient trees were again rolling down to the mills and the Northern spotted owl, the species the injunction was out to protect have now on the brink of extinction. The Gore-brokered Northwest Forest Plan calls for 50 years of continued cutting of the Ancient Forests. Not satisfied, Clinton, at Gore's urging, then, in 1995, signed the so-called "Salvage Rider" which delivered millions of acres to the chainsaws unfettered by any ability for citizens to challenge the destruction in court.
On and on it goes. Al Gore is a man of political expediency. The man who famously "reinvented" government, has been constantly reinventing himself. The rap that Gore is a man who will say anything to get elected is verified time after time by the authors. He has said famously that he "invented the Internet." He claims that he and Tipper (who comes off quite sympathetically in the book despite her censorship efforts) were the models for Erich Segal's book, "Love Story." He claims falsely to have "got a bunch of people indicted and sent to jail" when he unethically became part of a police sting while a reporter for the Tennessean. He claimed to have authored the earned income tax credit, which was enacted two years, before he was elected to Congress. He even claimed he did not know he was even "in a Buddhist temple" much less there to collect campaign cash.
Cockburn and St. Clair have done a service by exposing the Al Gore myth and providing the background information we'll all be looking for once the rhetoric and actions of a Gore administration, like those of the Clinton/Gore one, begin to not add up.
One can hope that the oily (yes, they delve deeply into the Gore family ties to Occidental petroleum and its shady head, Armand Hammer) Gore history will be looked at seriously BEFORE any vote casting, but, in the end, the fear inflation and collusion of the rudderless Democrat special interests will likely win out. Cockburn and St. Clair have earned the right to be first in line when it comes time to say, "I told you so."
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
