New York City

FOR AT LEAST a few minutes last Thursday, everything about Manhattan's Washington Square, home to New York University, was a political cliché. The socialists were protesting. "LaRouche in 2004" supporters, that distant look in their eyes, were shouting down their former allies. Activists were fighting with "fascist" police about where they could stand. Eager students were distributing flyers and holding up signs--"Draft Clark" and "Draft Gore" and "Bush planned 9/11 as a pretext for Afghan/Iraq invasion and war against the Bill of Rights."

Inside, the 500 spectators chatted in anticipation. The stage was empty but for a navy blue curtain and 12 American flags behind a handsome wooden lectern. Security officers scurried around looking for something to be nervous about. Folksy-jazz pre-concert music filled the room. And journalists complained about lighting, camera angles, and seating. (USA Today columnist Walter Shapiro, who walked into the packed house shortly after the event was scheduled to begin, threatened a powerless press officer: "I'm a columnist for America's most prominent newspaper, and I promise you if I don't get a chair, I will not mention NYU as the site of the speech.") Speakers saluted their host and one another. And the featured guest, a prominent politician dressed in a navy suit with a starched white shirt and a red tie, strode to the lectern to a loud ovation.

All of this is standard fare for a political event at a prestigious university, where radical activism is as much a part of the modern student experience as random hook-ups and booze. What made this event different was the speech that followed.

In a broad, rambling lecture that began with and returned many times to Iraq, former Vice President Al Gore toyed with some of the very same conspiracy theories peddled by the crazies outside. In 35 minutes, he managed to squeeze in several bizarre and acidic accusations directed at the Bush administration--recycling the blood-for-oil claim, suggesting the Iraq war was conceived and conducted to "benefit friends and supporters," labeling the administration "totalistic," and, in a reprise of an argument he made last fall, claiming that the Iraq debate had been cooked up to get Republicans elected.

At one point, Gore even seemed to suggest that the Bush administration itself might have been behind the forged Niger documents. "And on the nuclear issue of course, it turned out that those documents were actually forged by somebody--though we don't know who," he said, drawing out the last phrase for dramatic effect. The audience of activists from MoveOn.org laughed loudly and traded knowing looks.

Gore's speech came two weeks after former President Clinton, speaking to CNN's Larry King, suggested that mistakes in intelligence matters are understandable. Clinton also said, "The most important thing is, we should focus on what's the best way to build Iraq as a democracy? How is the president going to do that and deal with continuing problems in Afghanistan and North Korea? We should be pulling for America on this. We should be pulling for the people of Iraq. We can have honest disagreements about where we go from here, and we have space now to discuss that in what I hope will be a nonpartisan and open way."

In an interview before Gore spoke, one of his advisers said: "We heard President Clinton's take on this a couple weeks ago. Now we'll hear Gore's." And Gore's views couldn't be more different from Clinton's. The Bush administration, Gore said, is engaged in "a systematic effort to manipulate facts in service to a totalistic ideology that is felt to be more important than the mandates of basic honesty." Such deception, he says, is "dangerous" on domestic matters and potentially deadly in foreign affairs.

If the other Democratic presidential candidates have thus far avoided Gore's term-paper rhetoric, they clearly agree with his message. Howard Dean and Joe Lieberman were the first to issue statements praising Gore's speech. And so it seems we have the Democratic party's talking points for the 2004 election: President Bush and his advisers are not only wrong, they're dishonest. They're dangerous. They're virtually un-American.

It's one thing for Al Gore, who insists he's not running, to make such claims. But it's startling that all of the major Democrats agree with him.