Al Gore: A User’s Manual

Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair

review by Micah Holmquist

October 16, 2000

Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair are as vital and unique as journalists get these days. Both committed leftists, the two use their bi-monthly newsletter Counterpunch to tell what is really going on both in the halls of power and amongst activists in the streets, forests and shop floors. The two rarely mince words and taking great pleasure in deriding —if not afflicting in any real material sense- the powerful. Senators, union heads, leaders of liberal groups, and Pulitzer Prize winning columnists are just some of those that receive ire in the pages of CP. Cockburn and St. Clair are more than willing to go against the grain and have argued strongly against such things at gun control and hate crime laws. They give detailed accounts in just about all matters and never hesitate to be as derisive as possible when describing those on the other side of the barricade. In short, CP is muckraking from two snarling gadflies.

Cockburn and St. Clair bring the same attitude to Al Gore: A User’s Manual. More than just an attack on Gore’s politics, this book is an indictment of the person who may be elected president in just a few weeks. "Find a difficult issue in Washington and Gore has probably been on the wrong side of it. Find an awkward fact about his life and Gore has almost certainly misrepresented it," say the authors in the "Executive Overview" of this most unauthorized and unofficial user’s manual.

Readers learn about Tennessee Senator Al Gore Sr., an ardent New Dealer who groomed his son for the oval office. There is a glimpse of young Al’s college career at Harvard which Cockburn and St. Clair posit does not compare favorably to that of George W. Bush at Yale. We get Gore the GI with a cushy job (albeit in Vietnam) who smoked a lot of pot but thirty odd years later wants to lock up the young people of this era who do so. Then there is Al Gore the Senator who for a while in 1980s was best known as "Mr. Tipper Gore" due to his wife’s campaign again song lyrics that were supposedly encouraging "Satanism" and "abnormal sexual behavior" and generally pointing the country on a path straight to hell. Although the ultimate effects of this campaign are debatable, it did lead the "Parental Advisory" stickers that adorn many a CD today.

Cockburn and St. Clair also give readers a portrait of Gore the self-obsessed jerk.

After his son ran out into a road and was hit by a car in 1989, Gore decided that the fault for this incident lied with people living in ways that weren’t harmonious with the earth. Tipper wanted him to spend more time with her and his kids but Gore had a better idea. He holed himself up in Washington D.C. apartment and eventually produced the now infamous book Earth in the Balance. In what is perhaps the book’s most amusing moment, the authors recount one late night when Senator Howard Heflin of Alabama, who lived in the same complex, told Gore, "Son, you go home and see your family."

Gore didn’t take Heflin’s advice and by 1992 was of course campaigning for the White House with Bill Clinton. Tipper wasn’t in favor of the idea but eventually gave in and played the good political wife for the ultimately successful candidate. Cockburn and St. Clair then go inside the Clinton presidency and conclude that Gore was even more cynical than his boss. It is Gore who fights to make sure that Clinton’s presidency serves as launch pad for a Gore administration. It is Gore that fiercely argues that Clinton make deals with the GOP in 1996 and not help Democratic Party congressional candidates. Ditto for ideas aimed at reducing the size of government, savaging welfare and effectively undermine affirmative action. According to this account, Gore is the quintessential "armchair bomber" —to use a phrase that Cockburn has popularized- who may or may not actually believe that the U.S. military should be put to use for "humanitarian" purposes. But the vice president clearly does see rhetoric about "human rights" as a good way to get popular support for bombing other countries.

The authors do make a couple of missteps along the way. At one point, they argue that Gore extended his 1988 campaign for Democratic presidential nomination in order to make sure that Jesse Jackson did not become the nominee. Cockburn and St. Clair argue that Gore knew he had not hope of winning the nomination after the Michigan primary but that he stayed in the race so that he could levy attacks on Jackson that would ultimately help the more establishment friendly candidacy of Michael Dukakis. Dukakis benefited from this arrangement because he didn’t have to personally attack Jackson and risk of alienating Jackson supporters whose supported he needed in the general election. This seems plausible until the authors mention that after the Michigan primary Gore attacked Dukakis for being soft on crime. What would be the point of doing this if his assignment was simply a hatchet job on Jackson?

That a few of the sections don’t work isn’t a big deal since the most of the book is quite convincing. What is a problem is that this clearly a book of the moment yet it does not address what is probably the most pertinent question for many readers. As bad as Gore is, is it still worth voting for him in order to keep Bush out? Readers of CP know that Cockburn and St. Clair would answer in the negative but they don’t make the case for this position here. Exposes of Gore’s hypocrisy and rightward drifting politics aren’t going to convince very many who are wavering about whether to vote against Bush by casting a ballot for Gore. These people are already disenchanted with Gore and his politics —that is whey they aren’t sure if they should vote for him- but still believe that he is better than Bush.

Perhaps the authors feel that Nader candidacy is a strong enough pole of attraction so as to pull in such people. This is at best a risky assumption since the next president is going to be either Bush or Gore and that fewer votes for Gore could, at least in theory, help Bush. And however bad Gore may be, it is reasonable to think that Bush would be worse. To use the issue of reproductive rights, just because Gore won’t fight to expand to access to abortion does not mean that Bush won’t work to outlaw choice all together.

Successfully arguing against supporting Gore for radical reasons —something that this book clearly aims to do- requires saying that a Gore administration is not worthy of support either given the present situation or under any under any circumstances. This can be done in a variety of ways too numerous to mention here but none show up in Al Gore: A User’s Manual. And thus what remains is an entertaining and thorough attack on Gore but for no real purpose.

Al Gore: A User’s Manual is published by Verso

While writing this review I came across a story on the Drudge Report about how Al Gore has called homosexuality "abnormal" in the early 1980s. It is presented as being a new revelation. Funny, it appears in Al Gore: A User’s Manual and Cockburn and St. Clair are by no means the first to break this story.

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