Sam Smith: THE GORE QUANDARY CONT'D

[Synnical]

Related to my post here:

Sam Smith: WHY AL GORE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT POLITICIAN IN AMERICA

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=212589&mesg_id=212589

THE GORE QUANDARY CONT'D

YOUR EDITOR gets into some of his worst trouble when he breaks his
pattern and says something nice about a politician. Hence the outpouring
of angry mail over a few kind words about Al Gore. You can read it all
online, but as you do so, it may help to keep in mind what I actually
said:

"I remain agnostic long-term on the subject of Gore but feel for this
month anyway - and maybe next - he's the best chance we have of knocking
a little sense into this country gone crazy."

A two month pass is not an endorsement.

Besides, this journal is based in part on the Huey Long principle:

"Corrupted by wealth & power, your government is like a restaurant with
only one dish. They've got a set of Republican waiters on one side & a
set of Democratic waiters on the other side. But no matter which set of
waiters brings you the dish, the legislative grub is all prepared in the
same Wall Street kitchen."

I also agree with Walt Whitman, who once described a Democratic
convention this way:

"The members who comprised it were seven-eighths of them, ...the meanest
kind of bawling and blowing officeholders, office-seekers, pimps,
malignants, conspirators, murderers, fancy-men, custom-house clerks,
contracts, kept-editors, spaniels well train'd to carry and fetch,
jobbers, infidels, disunionists, terrorists, mail riflers,
slave-catchers, pushers of slavery, creatures of the President,
creatures of would-be Presidents, spies, bribers, compromisers,
lobbyists, spongers, ruin'd sports, expell'd gamblers, policy-backers,
monte-dealers, duellists, carriers of conceal'd weapons, deaf men,
pimpled men, scarred inside with vile disease, gaudy outside with gold
chains made from the people's money and harlots' money twisted together;
crawling, serpentine men, the lousy combinings and born freedom-sellers
of the earth."

But I also know there are times when even those such as the foregoing
can make things either significantly better or worse.

Lyndon Johnson, for example, did both. The Vietnam War was a disaster
but, at the same time, he and fellow scoundrel Adam Clayton Powell got
more good legislation passed in less time than ever in American history.


Too many confuse politics with canonization. It is not, however, a
matter of picking saints unless you accept that wonderful definition of
a saint, namely a sinner who tries harder. Neither is it just an act of
personal morality although that can certainly have an effect. And it is
not a matter of standing in the middle of the highway and crying "Stop
the War" until everyone agrees with you. Or runs over you.

Politics is a communal act that by its very nature is at least partly
amoral and should thus be avoided by the truly sanctified. And if your
views are really the only right ones, then why bother giving your
opponents a vote at all?

The reason is not because you share beliefs but because you share a
space called America. Politics is the compromise we all make so we can
live here together.

Once you recognize that politics is not an act of personal salvation but
mutual accommodation, morality starts to play a dramatically different
role. And at the top of its agenda is not our personal righteousness but
the salvation of the community or nation involved.

At times, albeit highly subject to debate, this means using imperfect
forces for good ends as the civil right movement did with LBJ and as
progressives did with the New Deal. To take advantage of a part of the
establishment that is momentarily headed in the right moment is not
immoral, it is merely common sense. At this moment, Al Gore is extremely
important leverage that good Americans have to move the country in the
right direction. This power should not be ignored.

If Al Gore announces his support for invading Darfur it will be another
story. If Russ Feingold develops a movement that will be another story.
Primary day and election day are different stories. But at this moment,
Al Gore is the best act in town. A sad commentary on show business to be
sure, but a true fact nonetheless.

READER COMMENTS
http://prorev.com/2006/05/gore-quandary.htm

I'm still agreeing with Sam Smith here.

-Cindy in Fort Lauderdale

[greenman3610]

1. Al Gore is a class act

those of you who are looking for perfection,
go join the fundies and wait for Jesus to
come back.
It's the greatest mistake in the world to
do nothing because what you CAN do
is imperfect.

[pnwmom]

2. He made me laugh again today, when he told the British reporter who

asked him how he should be addressed: "Your Adequacy."

[Lisa]

3. hah! nice allusion to "Your Excellency" ...

The form of address for certain officials under the British system (e.g. the Governor-General of Canada), and retained for some US governors. I've heard of it used for US Presidents when visiting Commonwealth countries -- especially poignant in Al's case!