Reply #84: Gore doesn't have to say "no."

[DFW]

He has been saying that all along.

But he knows better than ALL the rest of them what it means to
have your every word, your every action, your every facial
expression picked apart by the MSM and handed as ammunition
to Rove and his clones, and used as a distraction from issues
that really affect the country (heaven forbid there should ever
be a deep and frank discussion about THAT!! Oh, no!! Give me
family values, haircuts, Reagan quotes, how often someone has been
to church, the text of the Pledge of Allegiance, ANYTHING but
substantive issues!).

The radical right depends, closing in on 100%, on emphasis on trivial
issues ("family values") or non-issues (Swiftboaters) because if the
debate ever turns to serious discussion of important issues, they lose.

They know it. We know it. Only the public doesn't know it, because it doesn't
fit well into a 30 second TV commercial or a 2 minute "debate (NOT!)"
response to Wolf Blabber. Whether he is running or not, Al Gore is right
to avoid that circus. If he decides to run, he'll have to subject himself
to the whole gauntlet again, and I'll bet the thought of it makes him ill--
not because it's fluff, but because it deliberately avoids a public discussion
of that which is vital to the country and its survival, and THAT is what he
wants.

As for who he'd pick for VP: I have no answer, but I have a suspicion. If one
looks back 3 years, it's not such a stretch. It's a man who promised not to
run for President in 2008, and Gore and he would have to keep absolutely
silent about it until two nights before the Denver convention ends.

Having been burned badly by Lieberman, I think that if he got the nomination
this time, he'd pick the kind of man he really wanted all along. Outspoken,
on a par with him politically, a quick wit, a dynamic and forceful personality
with solid progressive views. He'd be tempted to ask Wes Clark, but the man I
think he would want is Howard Dean.