on the web:In her zeal to display the flaws of Al Gore, Coulter ridicules his performance in the 2000 debates.
"In the first debate, he was his natural self -- little Miss-Know-It-All . . . In the second debate he overcompensated and became Norman Bates in the last scene of Psycho . . . Naturally, therefore, the entire nation was on tenterhooks waiting to see what new weirdness Gore would unleash in the third debate. . . Even the audience was laughing at Gore for his ridiculous pomposity. Bush was in on the joke, laughing and winking at audience members as Gore grew increasingly insufferable. "
All of which accords, roughly at least, with my memory of the debates, but begs a question that doesn't occur to Coulter: if Al Gore was such a complete laughingstock -- a universally mocked buffoon -- how did he manage to win the popular vote in the 2000 election? Without the timely intercession of Ralph Nader, Al Gore would have won a solid victory. The debates gave voters an unfiltered opportunity to view the candidates. One would assume from Coulter's analysis that Gore would have received only the votes of New York Times editors and of Barbara Streisand's sewing circle, instead of finishing ahead of her champion.
3 comments:
Great little review - though nicer to Coulter than I'd probably be. Anyone who sticks up for Bush's intelligence has a tough job ahead of her. Like his father, GWB has trouble stringing sentences together. And as goofy and foolish as Al Gore is, the evidence is he actually wrote his books. What chance is there that GWB will even write his own memoirs?
Ah but he didn't "finish ahead of her champion". The founding fathers feared the power of the more populous states and we have the Electoral College as the solution to that problem. We live in a representative republic, not a popular democracy and all parties to the election know how it works. A look at the county by county mps for either of GWB's elections shows there to be an even greater sea of red then the state by state maps show. Including huge swaths of red in otherwise blue states. Gore finished behind Bush in the only measure that counts.
Uh, Army, you completely miss the point; which is that the utter fool that Coulter describes still got more votes than her (and I presume your) hero in the 2000 election.
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