Gore's hypocrisy is showing
November 18, 2003

Al Gore has once again demonstrated his inability to get things quite right.

In a recent speech to a crowd assembled by Moveon.org, the former vice president dissected the current administration's policies, blamed most of the world's ills on the man who turned back Gore's quest for the presidency and urged all who would listen to join the crusade to get rid of President George W. Bush before it's too late.

In his rant, Gore charged that the president lied in telling us that his tax cuts would stimulate the economy and create jobs, when in fact they have done neither. That sounded a little off key, coming as it did a few days after everyone including Gore's network friends were acknowledging that the Bush tax cuts had a lot to do with the fast-recovering economy, which is actually now producing new jobs at a fairly prodigious rate. It was silly and reminded even casual listeners that, yes, this is the very same Gore who frittered away a political career lecturing the rest of us on matters that often had little connection with the real world.

More serious, however, was the former vice president's take on what he sees as a conscious assault on our civil liberties. His ham-handed attack on Attorney General John Ashcroft and the USA Patriot Act served to weaken rather than strengthen the hand of those with legitimate concerns about the act itself and the government's apparent lack of concern for our civil liberties at a time when all attention is focused on increased security.

But let me explain. Concerns about certain provisions of the Patriot Act are widespread, bipartisan and legitimate. The law was cobbled together in haste after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and many of those who voted for the bill did so without even reading it because they believed not unreasonably that they had to act quickly and decisively to give the government the powers it would need to combat future attacks on the American homeland.

Until Gore opened his mouth, however, no one to the right of Dennis Kucinich had proposed outright repeal of the act. Few critics (and I count myself among them) support repeal. Even the American Civil Liberties Union acknowledges that much of what was included in the several-hundred-page act is sensible and necessary, given the threat we face, and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), the only senator to vote against the act back in 2001, said at a recent bipartisan press conference that he, too, prefers reform to repeal.

The fact is that the Patriot Act should be reviewed and, in my opinion, reformed to maintain the essential balance between liberty and security so important to the maintenance of a free society. I take that position despite the fact that I believe the attorney general has thus far avoided the widespread abuses that could one day make many of those who now support the act wish that they had looked at it more closely.

What is needed is a close look at the act as written and for advocates for reform to come up dispassionately with an assessment of what changes might be needed. Larry Thompson, a former deputy attorney general, has asked for just such a review and should be commended for having done so.

Gore and his friends, however, like to characterize the attorney general as the embodiment of all that is evil. They seem to believe that he and the president actually get together every morning to figure out new ways to undermine our liberties and that the Patriot Act is but one outcome of this conspiracy. That is, of course, absurd; the problem is institutional rather than partisan or ideological.

Ashcroft is simply trying to do a job and in his zeal to do so doesn't pay much attention to those who question where he might be taking us. That, however, is a human rather than partisan or ideological trait.

Gore himself proves the point. Today's champion of civil liberties conveniently forgot to tell his audience that back in 1996 he headed something called the Gore Commission, which proposed a government-sponsored computer data-mining and profiling program to screen potential airline passengers that would make the designers of CAPPS II and John Poindexter proud.

The potential threats to privacy and civil liberties that so concern him today were absent then. In fact, had he actually made it to the White House, he no doubt would be claiming today that he invented not only the Internet but also numerous programs to protect us from terrorists and keep an eye on all of us so that we can sleep better at night.