{"id":1050,"date":"2004-07-22T13:45:04","date_gmt":"2004-07-22T20:45:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=1050"},"modified":"2004-07-22T13:45:04","modified_gmt":"2004-07-22T20:45:04","slug":"i-read-al-gores-policy-positions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2004\/07\/22\/i-read-al-gores-policy-positions\/","title":{"rendered":"I Read Al Gore’s policy positions…"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>“Yeah, back in 1992 I met Bill Clinton and Al Gore. The man I really<\/i> wanted to meet was Al Gore. I took a good look at all his policy positions, and I was impressed.”<\/p>\n

This sort of crashed my whole worldview. I didn’t know a full-frontal Al Gore supporter actually existed. I assumed just about everyone who voted for Gore in the 2000 election voted for him in a vague sense of desperation, even technocratic<\/i> Democrats… with the exception of some Jewish voters in Florida, Joe Lieberman’s ethnic vote.<\/p>\n

A mildly amusing game I had during the 2000 campaign: I’d say “Just picture Al Gore’s State of the Union speech.” Whoever I was talking to would groan. “Now imagine George Bush’s State of the Union speech.” And, we’d have a deeper groan, or in the case of my mother who would go on to vote for Bush wishing she could vote for John McCain, a shake of the head. Granted, the reaction is somewhat visceral, and not tied with any reaction to policy — Bush’s mangled English versus Gore’s prissy mannerisms. A wonkish supporter of Gore would be better able to look past these surface problems, and — I guess by that virtue — look past the more substantial and meaningful problems with Al Gore.<\/p>\n

“So, you think that Al Gore could beat George W Bush this time out?” At the time, Bush was riding high after the 2002 midterm elections.<\/p>\n

“Well, sure. If he just lays it all out there and fights, and lays it all out there.”<\/p>\n

It was right about then that I formulated by then-out of conventional thought that Al Gore would not run for president.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Yeah, back in 1992 I met Bill Clinton and Al Gore. The man I really wanted to meet was Al Gore. I took a good look at all his policy positions, and I was impressed.” This sort of crashed my whole worldview. I didn’t know a full-frontal Al Gore supporter actually existed. I assumed just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-the-ground"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}