End of the Line?: The meaning of Al Gore's life

National Review, Dec 4, 2000 by Noemie Emery

Like Gore, George W. Bush and John Kennedy would probably not have thought of the presidency had they not been born into prominent families, whose influence and connections they enjoyed all their lives. But by the time they were running for president, Bush and Kennedy had come to like politics, to enjoy what they were doing. Campaigning, they went with the grain of their natures. But Gore had to go against his. Campaigning for almost two years, he has forced himself, pushed himself, exhausted himself, and endured torrents of personal mockery- just to see his prize pulled away, by a handful of votes, in a jerkwater state, to a man he regards as unworthy. To see his parents denied.

Perhaps the worst thing that happened to Gore took place in 1938, when his big sister, Nancy, was born a girl. She, by all accounts, was the magnetic one, the one with charisma and humor; the born politician who could have gone out and won, on the strength of her talents, what her family so desperately wanted. But the sexes were wrong, and so poor Nancy languished, and took to the smoking and drinking that killed her. It was her little brother, the stiff one, who bore the family passion, who was bent to it, and bent out of shape by it. In the process, a perfectly good policy wonk, who would have been happy enough in a think tank somewhere, churning out data on warheads and warming, was turned instead into a bad politician, who never got the words or the music quite right. Win or lose, it is now widely acknowledged that he has been in fact a terrible candidate, who squandered the gift of a splendid economy, and blew his own lead in his debate performance, when his desperation and his viciousness shone through.

His parents surely did not mean ill to their child or country when they tried to mold their bright, eager son into presidential material, but it is now clear enough they did both. They told a man who would become a very bad politician that he had to go out and win the highest political office in the country, if not the world. He tried and he tried, and his clumsiness killed him, and then in the end he sent out an army of thugs and shysters, led by the son of a vote-stealing dynasty, to steal for him the election he could not win himself. So what if the prize that he "wins" turns out to be hollow, if he is seen as unclean by half of the voters, if the picture wall in the Gore family manse contains pictures of an inaugural boycotted by prominent people, with counter-parades chanting "Hail to the Thief"? Ambitious parents over the years have managed to do a great deal of damage, but usually only on the private level, producing, like the Adamses, the occasional drunk and/or suicide. The Gores, by contrast, have created a monster willing to trash the whole country to fulfill their ambitions. Nice work.