Gore on Letterman and 20/20 - Will he run? Could he Win? Has he changed?

Great Debates
61

Oh, I understood. Le Pen’s extremist ideology is pretty clear when you look at all the evidence:

Ideological Nastiness
Holocaust Revisionism
Le Pen, as we’ve discussed, has dismissed the Holocaust as a “mere detail” and made joking references to Auschwitz. Is this a poor, misunderstood guy making a possibly controversial statement? Well, consider that when Le Pen formed the National Front he did so by bringing together several far-right groups. Among these was Action Francaise which had roots in the pro-Nazi Vichy regime. Early leaders included Pierre Bousquet, a convicted war criminal, Francois Brigneau, a former member of the Vichy militia, and Jean Castrillo, a former member of the Waffen SS.

I think that’s a pretty clear pattern.

Immigration
You’ve said that his immigration stance isn’t proof of anything. But let’s connect the dots. Le Pen served as a paratrooper in Algeria and tortured Muslim Algerians. Action Francaise has roots in the Vichy Regime and was bitterly opposed to independence for Algeria. In fact, the National Front contains members of the OAS who attempted to assassinate Charles De Gaulle for his decision to grant Algerian independence.

The National Front opposes immigration. But it specifically targets North African immigration which Le Pen says threatens to “submerge” France. He to expel 2 million immigrants on a “special train”. This last one can go in the anti-semitism column as well.

He told French women it was their duty to have babies to defend France’s identity.

We have the leader of a party who tortured North Africans, has welcomed colonists and assassins into the party and now, surprisingly, is anti-immigrant. This is a clear pattern of ethnic and religious hatred.

Anti-Semitism
In addition to the neo-Nazi roots of many in the party, Le Pen has accused Chirac of being under the control of Jewish organizations. See, also, his dismissal of the Holocaust as a “mere detail.” He also called for a “special train” to deport immigrants. Merely a poor choice of words? Given his history that’s a tough argument to make.

Again, the pattern is clear.

Anti-Muslim Sentiment
He tortured ‘em. Now he doesn’t want them in France and has bemoaned seeing mosques on the skyline where church steeples should be and part of his platform was a national ban on the construction of mosques. Again, the pattern is clear.

General Racism
How about his statement that the races are not equal and that history has shown that races do not have the same evolutionary capacity? How about saying that the Olympics showed the inequality between the “black and the white race”? How about the fact that he intended that last statement to show that he’s not racist because he acknowledges that blacks can do some things better than whites?

Le Pen is a much nastier bastard than Falwell or Robertson unless you have some evidence on those two I’ve never heard of.

Influence
See my earlier cites. Despite your claims, they show that Chirac has lurched to the right due to Le Pen’s influence. Several polls have shown that 28% of French voters agree with Le Pen on most issues and substantial numbers of voters agreed with other specific parts of his platform. He’s not an insider but everybody from the BBC to Le Monde have said that Le Pen’s popularity has brought new agendas into respectability and have forced Chirac to go to the right to counter Le Pen.

Perhaps it’s not like being an insider, but it’s a great deal of influence.

62

Um your “points” are just the same assertions dressed up in “arguments” like “connect the dots”

Buchanan is about as extreme as Le Pen by most of the measures you have cited; he is a Holocaust revisionist who actually disputes well-established historical facts, engages in Jew-baiting, rants about immigrants etc. The only thing Le Pen has got are the atrocities that he and countless other French soldiers commited during the Algerian war 45 years ago. I have carefully tried to explain, giving the example of Kerrey, why war atrocities commited decades ago don’t really tell us much about a person’s ideology.

Do I have to even begin with the insanity of Falwell and co., their bigotry towards Muslims ,their relentless demonization of homosexuals,feminists etc. their crazy conspiracy theories and insane agenda to replace evolution with creationism and the like. It all amounts to more than bigotry, it’s a kind of religious fundamentalism of a kind which doesn’t have any place in European politics. I am not sure what “evidence” you need to convince it’s more extreme than Le Pen.
“Despite your claims, they show that Chirac has lurched to the right due to Le Pen’s influence”
Why don’t you give actual examples of this “lurch to the right”? Which policies are you talking about? What your sources show, at best , is that the election has forced Chirac to address issues like crime and immigration . This does not mean adopting Le Pen’s policies. It means addressing those issues so that voters no longer are attracted to Le Pen. A big difference which you don’t seem to understand.

You also don’t seem to understand the elementary point that even saying Le Pen is more influential is not the same as saying that he is now as influential as Falwell and co. None of your sources indicate this.

63

Let me rephrase the first sentence of my last post. The facts about Le Pen that you cite are probably accurate. The conclusion based on those facts that he is therefore more extreme than American right-wingers like Falwell is just assertion based on bogus arguments like “connect the dots”

64

You’re right. Showing that a guy hangs out with Nazis, uses language similar to Nazis and advocates extreme positions doesn’t prove he’s extreme in CyberPunditland.

I should have pointed out that my last post was to anybody reading since I knew you’d simply keep saying “that doesn’t prove anything.”

65

Oh, and as far as the Kerrey example, if Kerrey deliberately slaughtered Vietnamese, started a party with people who advocated the slaughter of all Vietnamese, then proposed policies aimed at ridding the US of all Vietnamese then you’re damned right you could take his actions 30 years ago as an indication of his ideology. That was the point of showing a pattern, and I thought that was pretty apparent.

66

I think the point is that Le Pen’s activities as a solider 45 years ago don’t shed additional light on his ideology today. If nothing else the very fact that they have happened so long ago makes them dubious evidence of what Le Pen believes today. Why not stick to Le Pen’s actual rhetoric and positions today which are after all extreme enough. The problem is that they are not really more extreme than the likes of Pat Buchanan let alone Jerry Falwell.

67

BTW an excellent summary of various extremist positions by Pat Buchanan:
http://www.mtsu.edu/~baustin/buchanan.html

68

Buchanan is a red herring in this debate. You threw him in later as an extremist. I’m not arguing there aren’t extremists in the US. We’re dealing with Le Pen, Falwell and Robertson.

Sure it does. Le Pen has engaged in a series of hate-filled and racist actions spanning his entire adult life. It would be foolish to look at a person’s actions without looking at the context. If a man has associated himself with fascist and neo-Nazi organizations and people his entire life, that is extremely relevant in interpreting his actions and in trying to determine motivations and future actions.

I believe in liberal immigration laws, but I acknowledge that there are reasonable, good-hearted people who advocate limited immigration. There are also racist, xenophobic jerks who advocate limited immigration and who are masking their hatred in mainstream language. How can I tell who is who? Well, I look at their arguments, of course, but I also look at their history. If a guy with a shaved head and a Nazi flag in his living room and an assault conviction for beating a Jewish guy argues against immigration I can conclude that (a) I am speaking with a man who collects WWII memorabilia, wants to save money on haircare , and lost his temper on a guy who just happens to be Jewish is against immigration for mainstream policy reasons, or (b) I’m talking to a skinhead who hates non-whites and wants to exclude them from the US. Same with Le Pen. He wants to stop immigration and deport immigrants. Looking at his history it would be foolish to conclude he is a liberal advocating a policy he believes will help the poor. It’s more reasonable to believe he’s a xenophobic racist who hates non-white, non-French people.

69

“Buchanan is a red herring in this debate. You threw him in later as an extremist. I’m not arguing there aren’t extremists in the US. We’re dealing with Le Pen, Falwell and Robertson”
Huh? We are talking about the relative influence of extremists in the US and France. Buchanan is certainly not irrelevant. My link shows that he is at least as extreme as Le Pen. And he has had far more influence on government than Le Pen. He actually served inside two administrations. He was a prominent GOP politician till a few years ago. He is still quite a prominent commentator in mainstream media.

If you want Robertson here is an excellent article.
http://atheism.miningco.com/library/FAQs/rr/blfaq_rr_robert_views.htm
Check out especially the part about “world of conspiracy”

About the rest of it. Look we both agree that Le Pen is an extremist. But so are Buchanan, Falwell et al, But does Le Pen become more extremist because of Algeria? No because:
1)it happened so long ago
2)Soldiers commit atrocities for many reasons to do nothing with ideology.

70

I would kinda be surprised if Gore didn’t run. When was the last time an incumbent president has decided not to run for re-election anyway? Johnson in '68?

Plus, Gore has the possible advantage of not actually being permitted to wield his powers as President, so he can’t be held responsible for events occuring from 2001-5.

71

Um Alzarian, don’t hijack the discussion.:wink:

72

I just topped by to say that this has to be the most off the wall hijack I have ever seen.

Casually joke that I wanna move to France, look what happens…

73

Gore will run.

He could win, but he won’t.

Despite major p.r. attempts to show us how he’s changed (i.e. a new warm, friendly Al who’s devoted to core Democratic principles), he hasn’t. The New Gore = The New Nixon, at least as far as authenticity.

74

Why are so many people convinced that the New Gore is the False Gore, when it is entirely possible that the New Gore is the Real Gore? especially given the fact that the major complaint, and his own admission, is that he was trying to mold himself to public opinion before? Especially given the positions he’s taking these days, some of which are of questionable popularity.

75

Gore will run.

He might win, he might not. No idea. A lot can happen in two years.

Jackmanii said:

Why must a “warm, friendly Al” be fake? Why is it necessarily “New Al”, and not just “Old Al”, unobfuscated? And if, indeed, he hasn’t changed, then what exactly has he been all along?

Many of the criticisms of Al Gore leveled by the press and punditry, it seems to me, crucify his missteps in self-presentation while neglecting the content – and intent – of his pronouncements. (His “tendency to exaggerate” is a bum rap, debated more skillfully than I in many other threads.)

From what I know of him – through articles, his own writings, his family and those who have worked with him – I see Gore a well-intentioned dork at heart. So he often overcompensated while struggling with his tendency towards aloofness – that’s the natural result of an overly formal, old-fashioned upbringing. I can relate to all of that. Maybe that’s why it’s easier for me to see how his bearing in recent appearances has great similarities with all his previous “incarnations”.

I dunno, I just get frustrated at the cult of personality that politics has become. Why can’t us dweebs of the world get a break now and again? :slight_smile:

76

Well, Al Gore got this dork’s vote in 2000, and if he gets the Democratic nod, he’ll probably get it again, since I can’t imagine what George Bush could do in the next two years to make me break my three-election streak of non-Bush voting.

This “honest touch” technique could help Gore. Bush claimed to be doing the same thing during his campaign, all the while consulting poll after poll that he said he wasn’t consulting. If Gore could corner Bush and finger him as the poll-junkie that he apparently is, Bush would come off as less sincere than many had previously thought. Bush has always claimed that he does what’s right and does it at the right time, polls be damned. Obviously that’s not true, and if someone could take the air out of that myth, Bush would surely lose ground. Bill Clinton, of course, paid attention to the polls, but he was upfront about it. If a candidate could come along and be open about what he or she is up to, then some voters might see a chance to elect a new president, who would restore dignity and honor to the White House.

Al Gore seems much more empathetic now than in 2000. I guess he was probably a tad neurotic, living in the shadow of President Clinton, campaigning without the current president’s aid, like all sitting vice presidents do at the end of an administration. Hey, I can relate: I’ve spent long periods of my life fucking up before I finally realized what I was doing wrong. Gore is more of a man than me, because he can obviously admit when he sees that he’d been following the wrong course. The greatest men (and women) are the ones who bother to correct their own mistakes.