Risky Scheme: Personified

Risky Scheme: Personified
by Heather Roscoe

A familiar dilemma: What do I write about this week? Nothing has been bothering me significantly, I have nothing to fume and rant about--life is in order and all is well in my bubble.

Then Gore announced Joseph Lieberman as his running mate.

No, all hell didn't break loose, why should it? However this brought up several questions, namely, what, exactly is Gore trying to prove/accomplish by asking Lieberman to run, and why did someone like Lieberman, with such a clean record, choose to associate himself with the likes of Al Gore?

Pride. Lieberman's ego was flattered by Al Gore's invitation. Lieberman's inclusion in the democratic ticket was meant to erase, or at least thinly blot out Gore's former transgressions with the Clintons, as we all know. The only reason why anyone would agree to be put in such a situation is if they are blinded by a flattered ego. An ego, which will not risk political ruin.

By not dropping out of the senate race until he has certainty that Gore is going to win, Lieberman appears unconfident in this race, which is, perhaps, a sign that he doubts his effectiveness in the Gore2000 campaign. I would like to know just how he's going to be able to determine that Gore will win. He's not going to look at polls is he?

His plan? If it seems that Al Gore will not win the presidency, Gore will slide backwards into the brunt of political jokes, but Lieberman will still have the senate to look forward to? Hardly seems fair...

The democrats are merely continuing a cycle which began years ago with the beginning of the Clinton monarchy. Al Gore, fresh faced and eager became Clinton's running mate to make the Clinton administration look clean and preppy. It worked for a short while, until Gore, himself, was pulled into the degrading slime which has been dripping from the White House walls for eight years.

Al Gore can't erase his soiled record now. Unless he fixes his own personal problems first, no charming, angelic vice president is going to save his reputation.

Gore can't even lie. That's something that he didn't pick up from the Clintons. My favorite of Gore's lying attempts is when he tried to explain his dealings in the Buddhist fund raising scandal. The Wall Street Journal wrote "He thought the temple fund raiser was a 'community outreach.' The FBI report said he wasn't privy to the White House soft-money talk because 'he drank a lot of iced tea during the meetings, which would have necessitated a restroom break.'" ...which is, of course, one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. In all of my years working with children I never heard anything so blatantly childish. My little students were either very honest or they had the decency to lie convincingly.

"'I will not say a single unkind word about Governor Bush or Dick Cheney,' said Gore, who has kept up a steady criticism for both." Wrote Sandra Sobrieraj of the Associated Press. Indeed, Gore is demonstrating that either he's scared or he is entirely capable of acting like a bratty child.

However, as much as I don't like Al Gore, it's difficult for me not to pity him. Here is a man who is utterly and completely powerless. On the night of Al Gore's candidacy acceptance speech, who wants to bet that Clinton will get up and spew out a longer speech than Gore? And who wants to bet that Mme. Hillary will pirouette on the stage and yell out some words about her aspirations towards the senate?

"President and Mrs. Clinton are blatantly hogging the spotlight...the bottoms line is, Mr. Gore does not get to be the star of his own show until it's half over."
--New York Times lead editorial.

The New York Times also had a good point, noting that Gore needs to be seen as a separate entity from the former president. It's time for him to leave the nest, so to speak, but the Clintons who linger like cigarette smoke in car upholstery (no pun intended) simply will not let him.

Here we have a man trapped by his own party and his own boss. Rush Limbaugh thinks Gore deserves every ounce of the Clintons and their nonsense. By choosing to associate himself with them in the first place, he couldn't have expected less.

Gore is his own 'risky scheme', who has acquired Lieberman to act as a risky image enhancing scheme, hopefully to clear away the memory of the Clintons, who probably gave him the 'risky scheme' idea in the first place.

'And if he'd been around when the internet was invented...'