Would there be an equally scathing critique of the longer but not particularly more meritorious career of Al Gore?

The answer is yes, and the book is "Al Gore: A User's Manual'' (Verso). Authored by Alexander Cockburn, the veteran left-wing columnist and commentator whose ability to filet the deserving is unrivaled, and Jeffrey St. Clair, one of the nation's ablest and most aggressive environmental journalists, the "User's Manual'' offers a deconstruction of Gore that is every bit as chilling as the job done on Bush by Ivins and Dubose.

The masterful hand of Cockburn is at work from the start of this eminently readable tome: "Like a street mountebank fluttering a handkerchief to distract attention from his sleights of hand, Gore has always used his proficiency with the language of liberalism to mask an agenda utterly in concert with the Money Power.

"Nowhere is this truer than in his supposed environmentalism, which nicely symbolizes the chasm that has always separated Gore's professions from his performance. He denounces the rape of nature, yet has connived at the strip-mining of Appalachia and, indeed, of terrain abutting one of Tennessee's most popular state parks.

"In other arenas, he denounces vouchers, yet sends his children to the public schools of the elite. He put himself forth as a proponent of ending the nuclear arms race, yet served as midwife for the MX missile. He offers himself as a civil libertarian, yet has been an accomplice in drives for censorship and savage assaults on the Bill of Rights.

"He parades himself as an advocate of campaign finance reform, then withdraws to the White House to pocket for the Democratic National Committee $450,000 handed to him by a gardener acting as carrier pigeon for the Riady family of Indonesia.

"He and wife Tipper were ardent smokers of marijuana, yet he now pushes for harsh sanctions against marijuana users.''

Over the next 284 pages, Cockburn and St. Clair expand on the premise in detail that, for Gore apologists, can only be described as agonizing. For clear-eyed voters of every political stripe, however, "Al Gore: A User's Manual'' is necessary reading -- as is "Shrub.'' Even those who will chose to cast a lesser-evil vote are best served by an honest portrayal of the major candidates -- and of the diminished democracy they represent.

Of course, such realism is at odds with contemporary politicking. There is an embarrassing tendency on the part of adherents of both "major'' parties to try every fourth November to turn their respective presidential candidates into unassailable heroes. The problem with this increasingly difficult process is that it fosters a lie that the vast majority of voters see through.Given my druthers, I'd decommission the lousy debates between Gore and Bush and put Cockburn and Ivins on stage to debate which of their subjects poses a greater threat to all things good and noble. In the meantime, the next best option is to check out Cockburn, who will be in town Thursday to make the compelling argument that "Al Gore distills in his single person the disrepair of liberalism in America today, and almost every unalluring feature of the Democratic Party.''

Copyright 2000 The Capital Times

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