This political season has perhaps been the most interesting in our short lives. The hard fight for the Republican nomination and the possibility (as two well-known political analysts suggest) that it won't be decided until the GOP convention have provided the greatest dose of excitement. This excitement has hurt Bill Bradley and helped Al Gore by drawing both independents and press away from Bradley. However, all the excitement has helped Vice-President Gore in a much larger way as well. It has drawn attention away from the plain and simple fact that he, Al Gore, is a deceitful liar.
One of the constant themes Gore supporters voice about their candidate is that he is a decent man, especially relative to his boss. Whereas these supporters are often willing to admit the gross failings of the President, they are quick to contrast Al Gore the decent family man against the flawed Bill Clinton. But as the campaign continues and Gore daily compounds his exaggerations, lies, and deceit, one is left with the impression that the only difference between Clinton and Gore is that Clinton is a better liar.
Take for instance an example from the New Hampshire campaign. At a Gore event on January 30, Bradley supporter and Congressional Medal of Honor winner Senator Bob Kerrey had mud and insults lashed upon him by Gore supporters. Rather than simply accepting the truth and apologizing for it, Al Gore denied it had even happened. Though the incident has little political significance it indicates a shrewd and dangerous tendency within Gore.
And Gore certainly does have a tendency to lie about fairly insignificant things. By now all of us have heard of Gore's claim to have invented the Internet. But his distortions didn't end there. If we were to take Gore's words at face value, he would be the basis of "Love Story, the 21-year-old who provided ideas for Humbert Humphrey's speech at the 1968 Democratic convention, and the man who blew the lid on the pollution of Love Canal. With Gore telling the story, he certainly seems much more exciting than the flat, wooden man of late night joke fodder. Certainly these lies and exaggerations are not of the highest order but they do suggest that Gore is willing to lie simply because he can get away with it.
But Gore's lies have moved far past the petty ones mentioned above. Most egregious are his lies concerning his position on the abortion issue. Before Al Gore ran for president in 1988, he had an 84 percent pro-life voting record according to the National Right to Life Committee's score card. In 1987 he wrote, "It is my deep personal conviction that abortion is wrong," and said that abortion is "arguably the taking of human life." Instead of saying that he changed his position -- through legitimate thought or political calculation it matters not -- Gore has frequently lied and said that he has always been pro-abortion. In a debate with Bradley in January he argued that he had "always supported a woman's right to choose." But Gore has not always "supported" such a "right." What is it about the truth that scares Al Gore so much?
These lies have of course continued on other issues. In Gore's world he co-sponsored the McCain/Feingold campaign-finance reform bill. The only problem with that scenario is that Gore and Feingold were never in the Senate together. Feingold was sworn in as a senator on January 21, 1993 one day after Al Gore became vice-president.
Though this nation twice elected Bill Clinton to the presidency, it still seems a stretch to argue that dishonesty is a virtue. That message has unfortunately been wasted on Al Gore. Shameless has been an oft repeated word about his boss. It increasingly seems that it should also be applied to him. As we come closer to the general election, voters are going to have to take a hard look at the words of Al Gore and ask themselves whether we truly want another four years of lies.
