by Michael Tomsasky, NYRBThe race for the Democratic presidential nomination is more up in the air than it seems. Much has been made on cable news channels of Hillary Clinton's lead, which has grown since the spring to 22 points over Barack Obama, according to a recent USA Today poll.<1> But national polls are meaningless because we choose nominees state by state, and in the crucial early primary states, such as New Hampshire, the picture is far different. The best snapshot we've been given to date of Iowa, for example, is to be found in a Washington Post–ABC News poll from the same week showing Obama with 27 percent, leading both Clinton and John Edwards by a (statistically insignificant) single point.<2> In other early-voting states, surveys similarly show that the race is much closer than suggested by the national polls.<3>
Such polls obscure what is in fact a volatile situation that will likely pass through two or three more distinct phases as the actual primaries near. If, for example, 2004 is any guide, the voters of Iowa and New Hampshire will begin, about three weeks before they vote, to take a hard look at the question of which of the candidates seems the most electable (this was the main basis on which John Kerry vaulted past Howard Dean). Looking at the race from this perspective only blurs the picture further, however, because each of the three leading contenders can make reasonable-sounding claims: Clinton, that she is the most battle-tested, experienced, and safely centrist, and brings Bill with her; Obama, that he is the freshest face and the least vulnerable to attack, and that he alone among the leading contenders never supported the unpopular Iraq war; Edwards, that he is the boldest at a time when boldness is called for, and that he is a white—Southern—male, although of course he can't quite put it that way.<4>
For a significant number of impatient citizens, there is one more possible candidate who is, they would argue, the most electable of all. First, he's already won a presidential election; he was merely denied his rightful victory by an ethically compromised Supreme Court majority. Second, to the extent that foreign policy and terrorism remain potential Democratic weaknesses, he has extensive experience and expertise in dealing with both. Third, he was right on Iraq. And fourth and most importantly, he has reemerged in the Bush era as a completely different man from the cautious candidate, surrounded by too many consultants, we saw in the 2000 campaign.
Al Gore could not even bring himself to criticize the teaching of creationism alongside evolution in the science curricula of Kansas schools in 1999 (a moment that has stuck with me). Now, he has cast caution aside and is a truth-teller—on Iraq, on executive power, on the corrosive role of television in politics, and indeed on the need to give science priority over faith in public deliberations (although not specifically, to my knowledge, on Darwin). The Assault on Reason, in which he meticulously considers these four subjects, reflects the speeches he's given in recent years and, of course, his film on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth—a record that has, for most liberals, washed away the memory of the man who couldn't quite decide in 2000 whether he was a centrist or a populist and who, facing the likes of Karl Rove and James Baker in Florida, didn't seem willing to fight.
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