Al in the mind

Spectator, The, Jul 8, 2000 by Steyn, Mark

But the Al Bore programme was replaced by Al Rapport, first seen during the early primary debates in New Hampshire. If a woman in the audience asked a thoughtful question about, say, North Korea's nuclear capability, Al Rapport would respond, `That's an excellent question, Marlene. But let me ask you something. How many children do you have?' `Er, three.'

`And you're trying to raise them on a grade-school teacher's salary, is that right?'

`Well, yes, but. . . . '

`That can't be easy, can it, Marlene?'

`Uh, about Kim Jong Il, do you think... ? '

'I expect you'd like to trade in that second-hand Honda Civic, wouldn't you, Marlene?'

But then Al Rapport got out of hand and was replaced with Al Ultra-Gore, the guy who sliced and diced Bill Bradley until you needed dental records to identify his remains. This was the Gore who claimed that his opponent's viciously racist health plan would lead to more African-Americans dying of Aids. Bradley fled in terror - I believe he entered the witness protection programme and now runs a feed store in Idaho. But, wherever he is, he's showing an understandable reluctance to come out and stump for Gore. So now the vice-president goes out of his way to praise Bradley for the immensely valuable contribution of his health plan, increased Aids mortality figures among minorities notwithstanding.

Even the somnolent US media have noticed Al's multiple personalities, though they spent the primary season shrieking hysterically that Dubya had got all extreme and right-wing, when in fact the fellow hadn't changed in the slightest. As telling as Al's personality shifts are his policy ones. Many politicians' positions `evolve' over the years - Tony Blair's support for CND, etc. - but Al Gore's position on practically anything you care to name is now the precise opposite of everything he once stood for. It's as if whoever's pressing his buttons suddenly realised they were holding the instruction manual upsidedown. In the Eighties he was pro-life, protobacco and pro-gun. Now he's not just anti-gun, anti-tobacco and pro-abortion, but fanatically so: last week he announced his support even for `partial-birth' abortion - or, as many of us think of it, infanticide.

Homosexuality? In the Eighties Gore told the Tennessee papers that `I think it is wrong' and `I do not believe it is an acceptable alternative that society should affirm.' Now he believes that it's time `to let our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters take their place at the American table', and to enable that he would institute a gay litmus test for key administration appointments like the joint chiefs of staff.

People change, but not normally on this kind of scale and in the space of a few years. If Al Gore Mark I were still around, Al Gore Version 5.0 (or whatever we're up to now) would be running around denouncing him as a right-wing homophobic hatemonger who's in league with the big tobacco companies that are killing our children. It's barely conceivable that he could pass off this wholesale rejection of everything he once believed as some kind of `personal growth', so instead, even though his votes and his comments are all out there on the record, Gore vehemently denies that his earlier self ever existed: he's always supported `a woman's right to choose', he says, with eerie Invasion of the Body Snatchers plausibility, as if he genuinely has no memory of any previous positions.