Gore looks like a leader because he is a leader

Avedon Carol Note that Clinton and Kerry, both of whom want to claim the mantel of leadership for the Democratic Party, have been pretty quiet about this issue until Al Gore spoke up about it. Despite the fact that the Clintons were the ones who were supposed to deliver healthcare, Al Gore was the first to mention single-payer. Gore was also the first high-profile Democrat to make the case against invading Iraq. Up until now, the Democratic leadership has carefully ignored Gore, partly because they were too cowardly to agree with positions which were clearly right but not popular among the Washington blitherati, but mainly because acknowledging that Gore is right (when they have been wrong) would have threatened their own ambitions for the presidency. But this week Gore was too hard to ignore, and so clearly right that even these climbers were forced to agree with him. Gore has been showing the leadership that these people lack, and they are falling behind him in spite of themselves, because he is a leader. Look, the GOP works hard to dismiss Gore, to call him crazy, to marginalize him, and it's helped to convince some Democrats that he's not someone they need to pay attention to. Meanwhile, please note that the GOP works not nearly as hard to attack Clinton, consistently playing her up as the incipient party nominee for the presidential race in '08. Why do you think they're doing that? They're a lot more afraid of Gore than they are of Hillary, and not without good reason. Hillary looks like a panderer because she is pandering, but not showing any real leadership. Gore is the leader, and Gore has that one big thing that voters have complained is missing from other candidates: passionate commitment to what he is saying - honesty. Gore is the real thing and that's getting harder and harder to hide. He is obviously not pandering. Even a few members of the press may start to get it soon. I'll be interested to see if MoDo has another column about how Gore is boring.