Al Gore and the Call to Conscience

I, for one, could not be more pleased by how things are working out for Al Gore. Having lost the U. S. Presidency in a stolen election, Al left politics to revive a side of himself that years in the U.S. Senate and the Clinton White House could only have suffocated: his conscience.

Now, with an Oscar and a Nobel Prize to his credit, Al Gore would appear to be the most accomplished Presidential possibility this country has seen in many a decade--if ever. As a result, the "draft Gore" movement is headed into over-drive. But if Al were to enter the 2008 Presidential race, he would threaten the Democratic Party establishment's HRC juggernaut; he might also appear to be disloyal to the Clintons who certainly deserve some credit for helping the former Senator to achieve political heights that he simply could not have achieved absent their intervention.

So Al has a problem. Because if his conscience is truly back in working order, he has to know that HRC is wrong for America. HRC is still her daddy's Young Republican daughter. She is a war hawk--for fear that, as a woman, she would otherwise be perceived as weak. And, perhaps most disturbing, she is a grizzled political opportunist: conscience is not a significant motivating force in Hillary Clinton's life.

So what is Al Gore to do? Here is where we will see the degree to which Gore has truly left politics behind for the high moral ground. Paradoxically, the moral thing for Al to do under the present circumstances, is not to avoid politics but to embrace them.

For HRC, right politics in Gore's case would be to decline to run against her; but from a moral perspective, Al must run against her to prevent her from receiving the Democratic Party nomination (to which she feels entitled).

If Al sits this one out, it will appear that he has chosen a moral road over a political one--and, no doubt, that is how his action (or inaction) will be spun. But, in fact, Al Gore will only have proved once again that there is honor among the plutocracy's thieves. Gore needs to run for president in 2008 precisely because he does not wish to.

Those who back HRC because they believe it is time for this country to have a female president should stop to consider the consequences of electing a female such as HRC as opposed to a female such as Cindy Sheehan--the true choice of conscience. It's not the chromosome that matters in 2008; it's the heart.