SmallGovTimes.com

By: Steve Adcock | Published on 06/17/08    

I suppose something like this should no longer surprise me, but I couldn’t help but wonder why Al Gore’s endorsement of Barack Obama somehow managed to make headline news throughout the various media organizations in the nation this week.

Gore, as we all probably remember, lost a fierce election battle to George Bush in 2000 with ballot chads hanging in the mix. The former Vice President then tried his hand in education and soon found a home advancing the myth of man-made global warming to a gullible nation in search of answers from the apparent soon-to-be “catastrophe” hurling towards the Earth.

So why is Gore’s endorsement of Barack Obama at all important, significant or even interesting? Was there any other choice? Surely Gore would snicker at the thought of endorsing Republican John McCain or Libertarian Bob Barr. This was Gore’s only option. Why the fanfare? What is the big deal?

Some political analysts believe Gore’s adoption of Obama’s campaign indicates a united Democratic Party, but I fail to see the logic behind that awkward assumption. For the most part, Democrats will endorse Democrats and Republicans will endorse Republicans, especially at the national level. To me, this does not indicate a coming-together of any political party. Rather, it illustrates how politicians have operated for centuries.

Besides, voters who still hold a deep-seeded anger at Bush for emerging victorious in 2000 over Gore are probably hanging out in Obama’s camp anyway. There is little motivation for a disgruntled voter to throw their support behind a candidate whose legacy will probably look awfully similar to Bush’s. We can safely say few, if any, new voters will lean Obama’s direction in November because of Gore’s endorsement of the Illinois senator.

Let’s not forget that Al Gore endorsed Howard Dean back in 2003, saying that he’s “very proud and honored to endorse Howard Dean to be the next president of the United States of America.”

“We need to remake the Democratic Party, we need to remake America,” he continued.

Clearly, Al Gore’s endorsement of Dean had absolutely no effect, and that was only four years after the infamous 2000 election fiasco that left the former Tennessee senator searching for the meaning of life.

Why, then, would a Gore endorsement of Barack Obama have any more effect this time around? What makes the media fall over themselves to publicize this amazing turn of events?

A slow news week?


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http://www.smallgovtimes.com/story/08jun17.gore.obama.endorsement/index.html