Al Gore, Media Pariah

After Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this month, Paul Krugman ran a column in the New York Times about what he called “Gore Derangement Syndrome.” By this, Krugman meant the irrational hatred of Gore on the part of right-wing media organs like the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the National Review. Krugman identified three key motivating factors for this hatred: 1) the right-wing’s guilty knowledge that Gore actually won the 2000 election (although Krugman doesn’t put it quite this starkly); 2) the fact that, since that time, Gore has consistently been right when he has taken positions against the right-wing consensus (with respect to climate change and Iraq, for example); and, 3) the right’s supposed frustration over the failure of their attempt to discredit and marginalize Gore (exemplified, for Krugman, by the Nobel Prize award).

Krugman’s analysis is valid as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. Pointing a finger exclusively at the right saves Krugman from having to confront the implications of the much more troubling reality: mainstream media are just as guilty of having engaged in a relentless campaign to demean Al Gore.

This very point is made in a piece by Robert Perry, of Consortiumnews.com, responding to Krugman, entitled "Why Big Media Slimes Al Gore". Perry's essay represents the latest installment in his ongoing effort to explain the mainstream media's consistent denigration of Gore. He rightly traces this phenomenon back to the 2000 election campaign and to the post-election debacle, during which the MSM exhibited blatant anti-Gore (and pro-Bush) bias.

Perry then moves on to the press coverage of the results of the post-election re-examination of Florida ballots, which were announced in November 2001. As Perry notes, this review demonstrated conclusively that, if all of the votes had been counted in Florida, Al Gore would have won the state - - irrespective of what approach was taken for undervotes, overvotes, chads and the like. Despite this, all key MSM outlets headlined their coverage with precisely the opposite message (for example, the Washington Post's November 12, 2001 headline read: "Florida Recounts Would Have Favored Bush.") [Although Perry doesn't address the particulars in this essay, the MSM were able to (lamely) justify this interpretation based on the fact that the partial recount asked for by Gore, had it been carried to its limited conclusion, might have resulted in a tiny Bush "victory." Of course, they failed to note that Gore had asked for the partial recount, rather than a full one, only because he had already been thrown on the defensive by the media's scornful dismissal of his post-election efforts to have the votes counted as the divisive delaying tactics of a sore loser.]

In Perry's view, media obfuscation of the true result of the ballot review was due to 9/11 - - to a felt need to rally the country around George W. Bush in the aftermath of the attacks. But for 9/11, Perry implies, the November 2001 headlines would have proclaimed the truth: "Gore Won Florida, Should be President." As for the MSM's post-9/11 fawning coverage of Bush, and its continuous belittlement of Gore, whether over his having dared to criticize Bush's "war on terror", or his having had the bad grace to be awarded the Nobel Prize, or his having dared to grow a beard without permission, Perry ascribes this to "senior news executives [who] apparently still feel that it is more important to ingratiate themselves with President Bush and his powerful admirers than it is to show some fairness to the man who was the choice of a plurality of American voters in 2000."

Just as with Krugman, who he rightly criticizes for doing so, Perry, too, pulls his punches. As Perry himself acknowledges, the media stance vis a vis Gore was firmly in place in 2000. It has been entirely consistent ever since. Later events such as 9/11 have not had a significant impact on this, as he claims. This anti-Gore bias remains firmly entrenched today, Nobel Prize be damned.

During the 2000 campaign, it was painfully obvious that, regardless of which candidate particular press organs may have "endorsed," as an institution, the MSM favored Bush. Gore was subjected to a relentless campaign of lies and innuendo, intended (somewhat perversely) to define him as a serial liar. This campaign had all the appearances of a meticulously designed disinformation campaign (and, in this, it can be seen as a foreshadowing of the fraudulent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction media campaign, as well as the current campaign to demonize Iran). Moreover, it was led, not by Fox News, but by those supposed paragons of the "liberal media," the Washington Post and the New York Times. One need look no further than an April 2000 article by Robert Perry himself, this time in the Washington Monthly, for an excellent overview of this campaign, and its key operatives, Ceci Connolly of the Post and Katharine Seelye of the Times. Another excellent source is The Daily Howler. This piece, from February of this year, provides a good overview. Or browse through that blog's year 2000 archives for post after post on media distortions and outright lies regarding everything from Gore's supposed retention of Naomi Wolf as an "alpha-male advisor", to Gore's supposed claim that he invented the internet, that he "discovered" Love Canal, etc., etc. In truth, it seems clear that Al Gore was denied the White House (that is to say, the election was close enough for Bush to steal it), because of this relentless campaign carried out by the mainstream media.

Why did this happen? It seems to reflect, in particular, the following factors: 1) the huge multinational corporations that own the (increasingly concentrated) MSM, and the ultra-wealthy layers that control these corporations, almost unanimously wanted Bush, not Gore, in the White House; and 2) journalists, themselves, over the last several decades, have become highly compensated figures, celebrities even, increasingly distant in their insular interests and concerns from the mass of the populace. Journalists have also been the object of a relentless winnowing process, whereby those who are too incisive and probing in the "wrong" directions are shunted aside, while those who aren't - - and who can thus be "trusted" - - are promoted and paid substantial sums. These layers, too, largely favored Bush. Those few who favored Gore bent over backwards to appear "balanced," lest they reveal the dreaded "liberal bias" that might threaten their privileged position.

All of this was especially obvious after election day in 2000, as the winner of the election - - Gore - - was subjected to a non-stop barrage of criticism, invective and ridicule. There was virtually no support for Gore from any quarter of the MSM during this period and in the aftermath of the Supreme Court intervention - - not even "liberals" would dare stand up for democratic rights, let alone for Gore. Representative of this is a particularly reprehensible November 18, 2000 piece by Frank Rich, which includes this gem: "Mr. Gore's public protestation that what he is 'focused on' is 'not the contest, but our democracy' offers yet further confirmation of his unctuous disingenuousness."

The blatantly false media coverage of the Florida recount was not due to 9-11 - - this was, at best, an excuse that could be muttered in an attempt at explanation (or, perhaps, justification). From the morning after the Supreme Court's decision was handed down, it was clear that the media were never going to deal honestly with what had occurred. The loser in the Presidential race had just been installed by judicial fiat of a right-wing Supreme Court majority, based on a despicable "opinion" that, to any honest person with legal training, obviously lacked any legal merit; in short, the country had just experienced a soft coup d'etat. But for the media, it was "get over it" time. The New York Times' morning-after editorial is representative: "It is incumbent on citizens and elected officials alike to respect the authority of the [Supreme Court] ruling and the legitimacy of the new presidency whether or not they agree with the court's legal reasoning."

Were Gore to run for President again (as some liberals, including Robert Perry, have urged him to do), he would face this same wall of media disdain. The reason is the same as in 2000: the powers-that-be don't want Al Gore to be President. Just as with elite “journalists”, a relentless winnowing process now applies with respect to national candidates: those who have shown that they can be trusted are showered with cash and afforded "gravitas" by the media. Those who haven't are derided, denied money, and shunted aside.

This is not, precisely, about favoring Republicans over Democrats.  The default MSM stance in this era is undoubtedly pro-Republican, since Republicans can nearly always be "trusted" in the ways that matter to elites. However, the contemporary role of the media is more about systemic stability than it is about partisanship. It may, in fact, be the case that this year, recognizing and adapting to the angry mood of the electorate, the MSM will tacitly favor (or at least, remain neutral with respect to) Hillary Clinton or even John Edwards or Barack Obama. These politicians have shown themselves to be fundamentally trustworthy - - on Iraq, on the coming attack on Iran and other future military adventures, on the maintenance of Bush's tax cuts and ultra-pro-business regulatory policies; in short, on all of the things that the people who rule this country in oligarchical fashion want, but that go against the interests of the large majority.

By these lights, Al Gore, during the last seven years, has only grown less trustworthy, and for precisely the reasons people like Perry (and Krugman) cite with admiration: his public opposition to the Iraq war before it began; his championing of environmental concerns (implicitly at the expense of endless economic growth and the corporate bottom line); his call for all elements in society to show responsibility.

In recent months, many have suggested that in 2008, if this country is to avert catastrophe, we need a new FDR as our leader. In my view, this attitude is naive for a number of reasons (perhaps I'll elaborate on these in a future post). However, taking this attitude at face value, one might ask: When people seek "a new FDR" what are they really looking for? It seems to me that it's more than "liberal policies" people are after. The key characteristic that Franklin Roosevelt exhibited was an essential fairness and sense of responsibility, of "commonwealth", that gave him the courage (and the willingness) to take on entrenched and extremely powerful interests in an effort to benefit the populace (and the nation) as a whole. He persuaded Americans that the federal government was working for the interests of "the people, not (just) the powerful" (to use - - with slight alteration - - Al Gore's 2000 campaign slogan, itself the object of countless media sneers, naturally). It is this characteristic of Roosevelt, I believe, that primarily accounts for the fact that, as is well known, FDR was uniquely beloved by the mass of the populace. What is perhaps less well remembered is the fact that for this same characteristic, FDR was almost universally hated by elites. Indeed, I would contend that the central political project of American elites ever since FDR has been the prevention of the emergence of another FDR.

Al Gore (especially the "new" Al Gore, chastened, no doubt, by his experience of having had the Presidency stolen from him in plain sight), shows some potential of being this "new FDR"; that is to say, someone who might see his role as President as consisting, fundamentally, of acting as an honest broker of competing societal interests (not to mention those of the natural world and of future generations), and who might elect to carry out this role (however imperfectly) based on some kind of standard of essential fairness. It is for this reason above all others that the MSM will work relentlessly, if need be (and, no doubt, successfully) to insure that Gore gets nowhere near the Presidency in 2008.

Which brings us back to Krugman, and the insufficiency of his analysis of Gore. Recall that his third explanation for "Gore Derangement Syndrome" is the fact that "in [Gore's] case the smear campaign has failed. He's taken everything they [here he means "the right" but we'll call it "elites"] could throw at him, and emerged more respected, and more credible, than ever." In other words, they hate him because he won and they lost. But is this really the case? When they hated FDR, their enmity was directed at President Roosevelt. Alas, they're never going to have to focus their hatred on President Gore.