Thompson and Gore Share Tennessee Waltz

Al Gore and Fred Thompson have more in common than their Tennessee roots and international fame. Despite holding as close to diametrically opposed views as one could expect to find in the political realm, Thompson and Gore share an understanding of the most influential power in American politics in the twenty-first century: the media, liberal and conservative alike. Beyond merely recognizing that media shapes perceptions of politicians and political office seekers, the Tennessee duo dance a graceful waltz around traditional media outlets. Likewise, both count on their media savvy to convey their shared, albeit very different, passions for swaying public opinion.

There has been much ado in the media about Fred Thompson's decision to eschew this Wednesday's GOP New Hampshire debate hosted by Fox News in favor of airing his first campaign ad during the debate and appearing on the "Tonight Show" with Jay Leno later that evening. Critics of Thompson's strategy offer trumped up charges that Thompson is impugning the dignity of presidential politics by announcing his candidacy on the "Tonight Show" rather than the tried and true press conference method. Others, including his competitors, fault him for not taking the candidate debates seriously and joining them in their seemingly bi-weekly grillings from various media personalities "moderating" the debates. Such criticisms merely reveal the petty jealousies of media outlets who desire Thompson's stage presence for its inherent ratings draw, as well as the envy of his GOP rivals who work much harder, spend more money, and shake more hands than Thompson but unlike him cannot afford to skip the circuses the debates have become without suffering in opinion polls of potential voters.

Thompson is gambling that choreographed debates with candidates given only enough time for canned answers is no way to get his message across to today's voters. Those who have watched the previous GOP candidate debates would be hard pressed to argue that candidates are afforded any real opportunity to interact with potential voters during such events. The candidates do not debate each other directly, which would give voters entertainment and political substance, and until candidate debates are in fact debates, Thompson's choice to sit out these dances appears increasingly sensible.

Thompson and Gore are revolutionizing presidential campaigning and political issue lobbying, respectively, while media outlets and political opponents cry foul. Whatever one thinks of Gore's "documentary" An Inconvenient Truth, it is difficult to deny that using film as his communication medium for spreading the alarmist view of global warming effectively circumvented the traditional political lobbying strategy of persuading newspaper editors or television network on-air news personalities to take his pet issue seriously. Al Gore ran an end run around the traditional news media and took his message directly to audiences in forums, universities, high school classrooms, and living rooms around the world. He was eager to communicate his global warming opinions without the need for media middlemen to analyze his message and then explain it to their viewers or readers. People could simply watch his film and choose whether to accept it as fact or fiction.

Of course, media outlets became willing accomplices in spreading Gore's message, touting it so effectively that Academy Awards were all but guaranteed and media adulation flowed, perhaps as small consolation prizes for narrowly missing out on the brass ring in the 2000 presidential election. So thorough was Gore's manipulation of the media to spread a personal message that fellow Tennessean Thompson now appears to be following Gore's lead in bypassing media events such as Wednesday's GOP debate solely to keep his message from passing through the filters of mainstream media before it reaches potential voters. The following quotes illustrate the similarity in thinking and media strategy between Gore and Thompson. First, Al Gore from an interview with Vanity Fair:

Gore tells Peretz that he does believe that some of his words were distorted and that certain major reporters and outlets were often unfair, and admits that the tendency of the press to twist his words encumbered his ability to speak freely. “I tried not to let it [affect my behavior],” Gore tells Peretz. “But if you know that day after day the filter is going to be so distorted, inevitably that has an impact on the kinds of messages that you try and force through the filter. Anything that involves subtlety or involves trusting the reporters in their good sense and sense of fairness in interpretation, you’re just not going to take a risk with something that could be easily distorted and used against you.”

Your first reaction to Gore's comments to Vanity Fair will likely be to chuckle at the accusation that the New York Times and Washington Post were somehow out to sink Gore's chances for winning the White House in 2000. The illogic of such a conspiracy theory is remarkable; is Gore implying that those two bastions of media liberalism would have preferred and worked toward a George W. Bush victory in that election? Having addressed that absurdity we can return to the similarities between Gore's and Thompson's media awareness. Compare Fred Thompson's strategy for the 2008 election with Gore's concerns about the media filter as cited above:

The face time with Leno and the debate ad on Fox News Channel are the coquettish moves of a candidate who has already proven his aptitude using the media, from television to the Internet. While his main rivals—Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and John McCain—parry debate questions, Thompson will pretty much control his own message.

Thompson aides want as many eyes on the Web video as possible. The debate ad and a follow-up commercial on Thursday will instruct viewers to go online and get their undiluted message straight from the candidate.

"We think one of the strongest weapons this campaign has is Fred Thompson's ability to connect directly with the public," said Todd Harris, Thompson's communications director. "We want to drive as much traffic as possible to the Web site."

Gore clearly believes now that media outlets, even ones with a known liberal bent, lampooned him and affected voter perceptions of him as a presidential candidate in 2000. He believes it was "scary" that the media had such power. A politically wiser Gore, now with experience in producing and distributing his own media products and political message, understands the need to avoid the media filter and communicate directly with voters. Likewise, Thompson is effectively using a variety of media tools to share his views with voters without news reporters distorting his intended message.

This concept is similar to a phenomenon that occurs in the intelligence community; analysts read raw intelligence reports, determine what they think the intelligence means, and then distill it into analytical reports for policy makers who depend on analysts to explain what they are reading. If policy makers had the time or inclination to receive raw intelligence directly from field operatives and make up their own minds as to what the intelligence indicated, their policy decisions might be markedly different. Voters, like policy makers, like to have news and issues wrapped neatly in eye-pleasing packages and rely almost exclusively on middle-men, reporters or editors, to explain the significance of the news they are reading or watching. We seem to have lost our individual capacity to think, to reason, and to form our own opinions without a famous media personality telling us how we should think about the issues. It is truly group think run amok.

Gore and Thompson, though doing it for seemingly different motives, are breaking new ground and performing what may become an important service to American politics by taking their messages directly to their intended audiences. Rather than criticize Thompson for not joining his competitors in bowing before the media at CNN, Fox News, or MSNBC hosted debates, voters and pundits should praise him for ignoring the natural inclination to cozy up to news outlets that, as they did to Gore in 2000, will surely turn and bite him on whatever Achilles' Heel they can expose.

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Gore's Denials Are Evidence He Will Run

Al Gore will officially become a candidate for the 2008 Democratic nomination. He just hasn’t admitted it to himself yet. Although he attempts to deny to the media that he intends to run, his denials themselves actually provide the best evidence that he will in fact seek the presidency again.

Experienced interviewers/interrogators will recognize certain patterns in Gore’s responses to questions about his potential candidacy, patterns consistent with attempts to deceive himself and the interviewer. There are noticeable similarities between Al Gore’s denials of presidential ambition and standard denials of involvement by criminals undergoing law enforcement or intelligence interrogation.

For example, many murderers, when asked during interrogations if they killed the victims, offer the following responses: “I could never do something like that” or “I loved her, how could I hurt her?” While these responses give an outward impression of denial, when examined closely they actually contain no denial of guilt and reveal an avoidance of the actual question. Such answers also demonstrate the inability of the suspect to admit to himself that not only was he capable of murder, but he actually went through with it when the opportunity presented itself. In the minds of many who have murdered or committed violent crimes, there remains the faint hope that what happened did not really happen and that they must be innocent because they have no explanation how they could be involved in something so grave. They literally attempt to convince themselves with internal arguments such as, “that couldn’t have been me, I’m not that kind of person, I would never do that.” Yet these are merely conscious deflections from the unconscious knowledge of what they have done. The conscious cannot admit what the unconscious knows to be true, and the conflict is expressed in the attempted denial that contains a belief about them rather than an admission of what actually occurred.

Now, Al Gore is not a murderer or criminal (although there was that pesky issue of selling military and nuclear technology to China), but his responses when asked if he will enter the presidential campaign contain most elements of deception and denial commonly encountered by law enforcement and intelligence interrogators. In a mere two sentences, Al Gore's words confirmed for me that he fully intends to run but refuses to admit to himself or the media that he cravenly harbors that ambition. In an interview with ABC News this week, Gore was asked the question everyone wants answered: will he run for president in 2008? Gore’s response follows:

Gore underscored in the interview that he is "not a candidate," and that he is "not looking for a set of circumstances that would open the door for me to get back into politics. I'm really not."

But he does leave some wiggle room for the possibility of running in 2008. "Look, we're a year and half away from this election," he said, "[I] see no need to say, 'OK. I'm not ever going to even think about that in the future.'”

As the ABC headline provided by Gore proclaimed, “I Am Not a Candidate.” That was Gore’s initial response when asked if he was running in 2008. While this gives the impression of a denial, it is not a denial but is instead a deflection. In this response Gore is stating a truth: he is currently not a declared candidate. This does not answer the question as to whether he intends to become a candidate. By answering in this fashion, Gore clearly wants to give the impression that he does not intend to seek the presidency but his conscious cannot admit what the unconscious knows to be true: he has already made plans to run.

Gore’s expanded response is even more revealing. He claimed that he is not actively looking for exactly the right circumstances that would force his run for the presidency, such as adulation and begging from his party. He even reinforced this claim by adding “I’m really not.” This statement also bears some resemblance to a denial, but it is not a denial. It demonstrated that Gore cannot consciously admit to himself that he would hungrily seek the presidency if the door appeared open to him. He may not be looking for the open door, but he will walk through it when he comes to it on his own or his party beckons him toward it. “I’m really not” simply means “I really am, but admitting that would mean I am ambitious and power hungry, and I cannot admit that to myself or the media yet. Not until the door is open.”

He has made similar comments in the media. To Time Magazine, Gore stated:

…that he "has fallen out of love with politics" and that he was unlikely to run.

"I haven't ruled it out. But I don't think it's likely to happen," Gore told Time, explaining that he considered the role he was now playing as a global spokesman for awareness on climate change to be an important one.

"If I do my job right, all the candidates will be talking about the climate crisis. And I'm not convinced the presidency is the highest and best role I could play," he said in the cover story for the Time issue dated May 28.

Gore, who has repeatedly referred to himself as a recovering politician, warned however: "You always have to worry about a relapse."

The problem with falling out of love with politics, or anything else, is that falling back in love is common and unpredictable. In fact, the phrase “fall in love” is entirely inaccurate. Love is developed over time, through experience, trial, and sacrifice. One can become temporarily infatuated, but that is not love. Gore’s lifelong pursuit of political achievement and high office was akin to love, while his obsession with global warming and propaganda movie making is an extended infatuation dedicated to one convenient truth (sorry Al): keeping Gore politically viable while he licked his 2000 election wounds in preparation for 2008. His statement about falling out of love, while giving an impression of denial, was not a denial. If shown sufficient adulation by his party and his pet cause, Gore’s love of politics would quickly rekindle to its normal flame of obsession. Likewise, he claimed that he was not convinced that the presidency was the best role for promoting his global warming hysteria. He did not state, “I can never be convinced,” thus if the right people whispered the right things about global warming and the “bully pulpit” in his ear, he would surely find that convincing enough to jump into the ring while claiming he was issued a call to duty rather than fulfilling the lifelong ambition he publicly conceals.

Al Gore loves politics more than Priuses, campaigning more than carbon offsets, and the White House more than greenhouse gas reduction. If you believe Al Gore would rather be the world’s global warming guru than the President of the United States, you do not know Al Gore.

From War to Warming: Senators Seek to Divert Attention

One of the left’s sharpest criticisms of President Bush’s handling of the War on Terror has been the argument that after routing the Taliban in Afghanistan, he turned his focus away from Bin Laden and al Qaeda in that region in favor of waging war on Saddam Hussein. The needless war in Iraq, liberals and Richard Clarke claim, shifted resources and priorities away from pursuing Bin Laden and the Taliban further, and this stretched our military too thin to effectively achieve its missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Additionally, the 9/11 Commission determined that our intelligence agencies possessed thousands of seized terrorism related Arabic documents yet to be translated and analyzed due to inadequate budgets and staffing. The burdens of a War on Terror, the President’s critics claim, are too heavy for our military and intelligence agencies to bear.

Now global warming hysteria has moved members of Congress to propose a bill that would tie a millstone to the neck of our military and intelligence agencies by diverting their attention further from the War on Terror and sink them in a quagmire of studies, strategic planning, and war games to prepare for, drum roll please: global warming. That’s right, a normal cyclical global weather pattern is in line for being awarded status as a “national defense issue,” if a bill cosponsored by Sen. Chuck (Cut and Run) Hagel, R-NE, and Sen. Dick (our troops in Guantanamo act like Nazis) Durbin, D-IL, passes in Congress. The Boston Globe reported that the bill would order the National Intelligence Director to conduct a “National Intelligence Estimate” on global warming, and would likewise order the Pentagon to engage in war games exploring possible national security scenarios that could allegedly result from extreme weather.

Apparently some members of Congress, with the urging of the National Academy of Sciences, have become so spooked by wildly exaggerated films such as “The Day After Tomorrow” and “An Inconvenient Truth,” that they determined global warming poses a danger to national security so grave that it warrants their recommending that the military divert its attention away from the War on Terror to focus on hurricanes and climate change. I find it ironic that the President’s critics feel that diverting military and intelligence attention from the War on Terror is acceptable for global warming, but it was not acceptable in the case of deposing a dictator who had used chemical weapons on his own people and failed to comply with 14 UN resolutions demanding WMD inspections.

When I go to sleep at night, I am far more worried about a rogue nation in possession of WMDs than I am of a cyclical and temporary melting of polar ice fields. Severe weather was such a threat to national defense in 2006 that we had 0 (none, zero) hurricanes make landfall in the U.S.

The motive behind the bill is more insidious. The White House has apparently not embraced the questionable science behind the global warming frenzy, and this has frustrated those who have staked their professional reputations on the issue. Consider this excerpt from the Boston Globe’s coverage of the proposed bill:

"If you get the intelligence community to apply some of its analytic capabilities to this issue, it could be compelling to whoever is sitting in the White House," said Anne Harrington , director of the committee on international security at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington. "If the White House does not absorb the independent scientific expertise, then maybe something from the intelligence community might have more weight."

Will this be the new trend, to declare every pet issue a “national defense” issue because the White House is more likely to read and take action on military and intelligence reports than climate change “science?” Like the boy who cried wolf’s exaggerated warnings, the more causes that are given national defense status, the more difficult it will become to properly assign highest priority to those that pose the greatest immediate threat. Worse, diverting resources from military and intelligence operations to alleged global warming while we are fighting a real War on Terror and Operation Iraqi Freedom, is a shoddy approach to national defense that reeks of political opportunism.

Senators Hagel and Durbin should cut out some of that shameful pork attached to the armed service appropriation bill drafts and divert it to hire more translators and intelligence staff to sift through the mountain of documents seized in Afghanistan and Iraq instead of demanding national intelligence estimates on global warming. We need better intelligence on Iran more than we need intelligence estimates on severe weather. We can assert far more control over one than the other.