Al Gore has more in common with Dan Quayle than is commonly acknowledged. Both were Vice Presidents who never graduated to the next level, and both had a knack for self-parody that can only be explained as a kind of reverse genius. Michael Moynihan at the Libertarian Reason has this beautiful example of Gore's talent, from his recent book.
Gore argues that the average American is in an advanced state of political torpor, induced by a profit-mad mass media. By way of illustration, he offers this folksy—if bizarre—anecdote: “When I was a boy growing up on our family farm in the summers,” he writes, off-handedly acknowledging that he wasn’t, in fact, a year-round farm boy, “I learned how to hypnotize chickens.” The former Vice President would render the birds “entranced and completely immobile” by forcing his quarry to follow the path of his finger. “It turns out that the immobility response in animals is an area that has received some scholarly attention, and here is one thing that scientists have found: the immobility response is strongly influenced by fear.” The American news consumer, therefore, is something akin to a frightened chicken.
Now I don't think that Gore is really planning to run for anything ever again. He is having way too much fun and getting his famous man jones satisfied by all the media attention. But he will always be Mr. Vice President, and hence a politician, even if out of office. There is no politician alive or dead who would not risk damnation by telling that story on himself.
If he were in office, think how the pundits would run with it. "Well, I don't know about the chickens, Mr. President, but you sure put us to sleep." Or a more cutting: "Here is young Al Gore, already so addicted to being the center of attention that he took to mesmerizing barnyard fowl." If you don't believe me, ask Jimmy Carter about his rabbit.
But Moynihan is right about the more disturbing aspect of Gore's argument. He thinks the American people are as stupid as a bunch of poultry. That, at least, would explain eight years of George W. Worse, he thinks the people have been immobilized by fear, but is spending all this waking energy trying to scare us about global warming. This suggests that he has no idea what he himself is doing.
It was once said of George W. Bush that he was born on third base and thought he hit a triple. Gore was born on third base, and thought he invented baseball. There is no coming back from that.
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