Junto Boys

The only thing keeping Gore from being the most appealing Democrat is that he is the most condescending. This was easy to forget as he spent months with a zipped lip. I saw some of the speech yesterday and every sentence seemed to be delivered as a father to his small children. He talks slow and he draws things out and the whole delivery gives the feeling of superiority. No wonder nobody bought the book last year. Who wants to read 400 pages of this? When you stack him up against the other candidates, he seems effeminate.

Gore needs to listen to Howard Dean. Dean may have two left feet, but he talks to you instead of at you. Dean is also the only one who makes his anti-war views seem genuine. Everybody else sounds like they are reacting to the polls.

Gore was part of an administration that said many of the things Bush did. Gore missed a golden opportunity to be the Lieberman of the campaign who helped Bush make the case for war while differentiating on other policies. Nixon wasn’t running around in 1963 giving speeches denouncing Kennedy and his Cuba policy. As it stands, it seems more and more like Gore was being a good little soldier while he disagreed with Clinton more than he let on at the time.

"Too many of our soldiers are paying the highest price for the strategic miscalculations, serious misjudgments and historic mistakes that have put them and our nation in harm's way," said Mr. Gore, whose critique of the administration resembled that of the Democratic contenders for president.

"Listening to him speak, you'd almost think that he wasn't vice president when terrorists attacked the USS Cole, when they attacked U.S. military barracks overseas, when they attacked the World Trade Center the first time [in 1993]. These were not 'mistaken impressions,'" Miss (Christine) Iverson (spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee) said.

Gore wants to capture the spirit of the 60s war protesters, but regardless of the media’s romanticism of that era, the average voter doesn’t respond well to hearing his country blasted from “leaders.”