The Chris Moeller Archives

Baldwin's riddle

Actor, impresario, and master of all-things-theatrical Alec Baldwin struck a hornet's nest with a ball bat today-- posting a piece on Arianna Huffington's blog describing the ideal presidential candidate, proclaiming that he actually exists, but then not disclosing who he believes that person is. As of 8:30 this evening, 129 comments had posted.

Roughly ninety percent of the respondents so far believe he's referring to Al Gore, but my immediate reaction was that he must have sat mesmerized as I did, listening to Ralph Nader describe his new book "The Seventeen Traditions" Sunday night on C-SPAN2's "Book Notes. " One Nader-hater in the comment thread even said he would vomit on his computer if Ralph were the subject-- obviously having recognized the public advocate from Baldwin's description: "One man. Smart. Experienced. Brave. Doing it for the RIGHT REASONS!"

I swear to you nothing gets my blood up anymore like these knee-jerk attacks on Nader, mostly from people who were sound asleep during the Clinton Administration and the 2000 campaign. Not until Bush and Cheney arrived did they then see fit to blame it all on the one persistent messenger who had warned against the Democrats' race to the middle. One writer in the Baldwin thread (top of page 2) had the audacity to claim that it has been Al Gore who "has been more right, more often, about the most important issues facing our country over the last couple decades." Whooaa there! Wrong guy. GarryJ must have been out drinking the night Gore debated Ross Perot over NAFTA on Larry King in 1996.

He's also forgetting about Gore's role in the founding of the Democratic Leadership Council, whose core tenet involves moving the Democratic Party towards capitulation to the modern-day right-wing-controlled GOP. He called for a stop to the vote-counting in Florida in 2000, disenfranchising thousands of African-American voters and inviting Republicans to steal the next presidential election and who knows how many more to come. He thought Joe Lieberman was the best candidate for Vice President, but seven years later, Lieberman accompanies Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in the 20 percent roll call of Americans who believe a military escalation in Iraq is a good idea, and who in 2006, leveraged his own party's success against his career and continues to sell it out at every turn.

Baldwin can't be talking about Gore. Gore is smart and experienced, but he's not brave. He was steamrolled by Al From during the 2000 campaign, and even now, keeps himself out of the arena on all but one issue. Only one candidate ever filed a lawsuit over voter fraud in Florida or Ohio in 2000 and 2004, and he's a pariah to most on the left. Gore's a captivating film subject, I'll give him that. He convinced me so completely that the Washington political establishment needs to heed the dangers of Global Warming, I damn near forgot he was Vice President of the United States for eight years. And I'll give you one guess which U.S. President first stripped the Kyoto Treaty of all of its potential global impact under the political and financial servitude of American corporate polluters... and it wasn't George W. Bush.

The rock star treatment Gore gets from liberals is extravagantly short-memoried. It's Bill Clinton and Barack Obama all over again-- focusing one more time on the candidate's words and not his or her records. The activists have been charmed by a pretty face, and that pretty face is Leonardo DiCaprio's, on stage with Gore at the Academy Awards.

You've been waiting for this, and here it is: Ralph Nader is the one man "that's been more right, more often," not just about the most important issues of the day, but about damn near everything, and not just over the last two decades, but since his public life began in 1959. He's been perhaps our greatest citizen and statesman in history-- smart, displaying bravery at every turn, and embodying, in Baldwin's well-chosen words, "the true American spirit."

I, for one, plan to buy his book.

posted by CM @ 8:22 PM