To be electable, a candidate for office needs to be likable. It’s not a complicated formula, but Al Gore still doesn’t get it, or he does and doesn’t care. I think he does know what it takes to be a presidential winner, but he just doesn’t care. Rumors of a Nobel Peace Prize aside, his new book, An Assault on Reason, is the latest case in point.

If you thought Al Gore was arrogant, condescending, and a know-it-all before (none who read these entries probably do), then Al removes all doubt in his latest broadside on the Bush administration. He doesn’t stop there: He lamely blames all Republicans, the media (except those who give him favorable reviews), all voters (except those who presumably vote as he would vote), political TV commercials, sound-bite communications, the duped general public that has been manipulated by the mass media, and other political books (claiming his is not a political book). I don’t think I left anything out of his blame list, except the conglomerates that own the media. Maureen Dowd gets it right when she calls Gore’s book a “high-minded scold”. Gore’s primary “research” is selective newspaper articles, selective Congressional testimony, selective commission reports and other easy-to-access news sources that he endlessly footnotes to give him some “cover”. There is no original research and he breaks no new ground, except in his broad sweep of villains and when he wants to put us down. 

For example, Maureen points out that Al told James Traub of the NYT Magazine that one of his villains, TV, induces a sort of national trance because the brain’s fear center, the amygdale, receives only a fraction of electrical impulses from the neocortex. Gore lectures Traub about the amygdale, adding “which I am sure you know comes from the Latin ‘for almond’”. 

Some disclosure here. I saw his movie and got Gore’s scolding there but I have not read his book, nor do I intend to read it. I have read a variety of book reviews about the book and that is good enough for me. The reason I don’t plan to read the book is because the last thing I need is a condescending politician lecturing me about how life is. And this is where Al missed the boat in 2000, and where he misses the boat again: He is right, everyone else is wrong.  

Just because Al Gore is more right about the things we care about, doesn’t make him right. His tone is all wrong and his villains are to sweepingly trite. Add his arrogance and we are left with an unlikable free-wheeler crank, except for those who like this kind of sophomoric rant.