http://www.woai.com/news/news_commentary/s...0D-B3F546F2D18DGore's Bitterness
LAST UPDATE: 10/19/2004 2:59:47 PM
An editorial / By Jay Ambrose Scripps Howard News Service
Al Gore can't seem to discuss politics these days without letting loose with bitter, mean-spirited, ad hominem attacks on President Bush, as if that were somehow a substitute for rational discussion.
In his latest effusion, he talked of Bush's "love of power for its own sake." He said the president had cloaked "an astonishingly selfish and greedy collection of economic and political proposals" in "phony moral authority" and was making a "radical effort to take what rightfully belongs to the American people" and give it to "the wealthy and privileged."
He added that whenever Bush sees a little old lady he runs over and kicks her in the leg.
OK, Gore didn't actually accuse Bush of the last item in that list, but it's a wonder he didn't, seeing as how no exaggeration seems past him.
Bush's love of power? What even many liberal commentators have seemed to understand is that if Bush had lost the last election or should lose this one, he would be at ease with himself. Did Gore himself take his loss in the 2000 election with equanimity? His behavior suggests differently.
As for all this nonsense about taking from the poor to give to the rich, it ought to be understood that the better-off families in America pay the bulk of the taxes in this country, and that the percentage paid by those at the top has been going up and up over the decades.
Cutting investment taxes - which leaves more money in the pockets of the wealthy but also leaves more in the pockets of literally millions of middle class families - is a means of stimulating the economy and benefiting everyone.
We could, of course, build a nation in which one group pays all the taxes and another group gets all the benefits, but it wouldn't be fair or wise or the way a democracy is supposed to operate. It would in fact be the death of our democracy.
Gore also made Bush's religious feelings out to be false. This is tricky ground on which to tread, unless, of course, Gore can see into a man's heart. It looks instead as if he cannot see past his own fury.
Maybe there are people out there who continue to take this former vice president and senator seriously. They shouldn't.
Jay Ambrose is director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard Newspapers and can be reached at AmbroseJ(at)shns.com