COCKBURN FILETS GORE IN SCATHING DETAIL

After reading "Shrub,'' the delicious dissection of George W. Bush's
short political journey penned by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose, I was
left with just one question:

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.''