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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
The same awkward Gore struggles to excite a crowd of young Manhattanites, under the scrutiny of skeptics in his own party.
Jun 28, 2002 | Thursday night, long after Al Gore and his lovely daughter Karenna left Lot 61 -- the hip Manhattan club where his new political action committee, Leadership 2002, had a small, $50-a-head youth-themed event Thursday night -- former KISS bassist Gene Simmons walked in.
"Did you come here for the Al Gore event?" I asked.
"Who?" he said. He hadn't.
"Al Gore," I said.
"Who?" he said again, laughing. He looked at his date who didn't seem to get the joke.
"Al Gore," I replied. "The former vice president? He had an event here tonight."
"Why?" Simmons asked, matter-of-factly.
"Ummm ... for youth," I said. "For young people. To get them motivated, to tell them to vote for Democrats in November."
That's why, after all, several hundred young folks had splurged to show up at a club that more commonly hosts parties for the likes of Maxim magazine, which had an event there last month. There seemed to be two purposes to Thursday's event. The first was to raise money for a Gore project to teach young Democrats about politics and campaigns. The main reason, though, seemed to be to remind people that Gore's still around. Which did not sit too well with Mr. Simmons.
"I think it's a bad time to talk about electing Democrats," the aged rocker said. "Somebody got into the White House who nobody thought should have gotten into the White House and he went and did a bang-up job. He went and he rolled up his sleeves and he said it's time for politics to stop and it's time for ass-kicking to begin. I think the last thing the public wants to hear right now is politics. I think the last thing people want to hear is anything from the Democrats."
And with that, Simmons and his coterie of silicone-augmented gigglers turned and left the building.
Simmons, of course, is not Joe Sixpack. But strangely, he had tapped into the chief insecurity of Democrats who are watching Gore go about rehabilitating his career. Gore backers swear that the rank and file love their boy -- he won the popular vote, after all -- and that the skeptics are ivory-tower Manhattan and Washington elites. But it's tough to reason that now is as good a time for another Albert Arnold Gore Jr. presidential run than, say, when he was an incumbent vice president and the world was in a blissfully innocent state of peace and prosperity.
As he dips his toe back in the pool and reenters political life, the plumper, balder Gore, already too sensitive to criticism from should-be allies, seems to sense the whisperings. He feels he has been proven correct about Bush's campaign deceptions -- the deficit is back, the Social Security trust fund has been pilfered, environmental regulations are being rolled back, the economy is in the crapper -- and seems a bit frustrated at the less-than-lusty reception he's being greeted with.
He surely has plenty of detractors. "Gore smacks right now of a child star in the middle of an awkward adolescence," an operative from a Democratic rival's camp snarked earlier in the day. "He's still showing up for auditions, and the casting crew is reluctant to tell him he's the Tina Yothers of the Democratic Party."
But naysayers be damned, all signs indicate that Gore is going to go for it again. "It's been an interesting year, year and a half for me," Gore understated Thursday night. The Gores just set up their new home in a very White House-looking $2.3 million estate in a tony section of Nashville. And in an interview with the Memphis Commercial-Appeal that hits the stands Friday, Tipper Gore -- previously thought reluctant to see her main squeeze reenter the brutal fray -- says that she finds the prospect of another Gore presidential run "exciting" and if asked for her advice she would tell her hubbie, "Let's get going right now."
