TWS contributor Adam White emails:
I saw in Politico that Al Gore is attacking Cheney, and asserting that "I waited two years after I left office to make statements that were critical."
That struck me as completely untrue, and it took me about two minuets to confirm my recollection. Here are just a few samples:
Contra Costa Times, 1/10/02: "While praising President Bush for his leadership in the war effort, he went on to say that the economy was another matter. 'I'm not here to make a political speech, but I am concerned,' Gore said."
Boston Globe, 4/14/2002: "'They are wrong to vilify honorable men and women who oppose their right-wing domestic agenda and oppose a blatantly dishonest budget,' Gore said. 'They are wrong to imply that those who stand up to them are somehow unpatriotic.'" (Headline -- "Combative Gore Lashes Out At Administration Policies In Fla. Speech, He Hits Bush For 'Radical Agenda'") [Note: So much for his assertion today that his early criticsm of the Bush Administration focused on policy.]
USA Today, 4/15/2002: "Gore's speech was the emotional peak of the convention. With practiced skill, humor and a passion some delegates said they did not see during the campaign, Gore denounced virtually every element of Bush's domestic policy." (Headline -- "Gore's fiery speech raises questions of plans")
NY Times, 4/23/2002: "Sounding very much like the candidate he was and may become again, Al Gore said today that the environment was a moral issue and the Bush administration was giving 'policy payoffs to polluters.' 'Our environment is under siege,' Mr. Gore , the former vice president, said in an Earth Day speech here to 400 students at Vanderbilt University. 'The Bush administration has chosen to serve the special interests instead of the public interests and subsidize the obsolete failed approaches of the past instead of the exciting new solutions of the future. Instead of ensuring that our water is clean to drink, they thought that maybe there wasn't enough arsenic in the drinking water.'"
LA Times, 6/30/2002: "In a speech Saturday night to local Democrats, Gore attacked Bush's economic policies as "a total catastrophe." He also noted that in the war on terrorism, the U.S. has yet to catch Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and he denounced the White House for "trying to use the war for political purposes.'" [I guess that's just more pure criticsm of policy ... .]
In other words, Gore didn't wait "two years." He waited less than one year, and within little more than a year he was a fire-breathing, raving critic.
Of course, the only reason why Gore even waited that long was to let post-9/11 national unity subside. The USA Today article I quoted above noted the obvious fact that "Gore was poised to take a more aggressive stance against Bush last fall, but Sept. 11 intervened."
The truly ironic part is that my research was made easy by ... the Internet. I've turned Al Gore's own creation against him.
