It gets better. "Although Clinton could ill afford yet another independent counsel looking into his past actions, for Gore such an investigation could have amounted to a kiss of death for his own dreams of the presidency."
Now wait a minute, I can understand Reuters – which depends on fat-cat business to support it's ailing network of stringers and now concentrated in Washington for the scandal value alone – going after a Democrat White House, but to do it using this kind of drivel is just too much. Bill Safire looks less senile next to this clown.
Read on with McQuillan — "…a relieved Gore used an appearance in Middletown, Connecticut, to quickly hail the decision and proclaim the matter "has been put behind us once and for all." Knowing his wishful thinking, however, would not made it so. Gore then fired a warning shot for his critics, declaring: "Bear in mind that the same people who are making the partisan attacks are blocking campaign finance reform."
Oh my. So McQuillan, brilliant political analyst, just conveniently leaves out part of the quote where Gore explicitly says "we can put this issue of the phone calls behind us once and for all.", and then goes on to write that Gore is firing warning shots. A warning shot it wasn't .Otherwise the Veep would have called out Barbour and Gingrich names and told them , "Watch out, you're next!"
McQuillan then quotes the well-known Stephen Wayne of Georgetown University. "It takes him off a pedestal that he had been put on in comparison to Bill Clinton," said presidential scholar Wayne. "I don't think he has been severely damaged in what counts, and that is the perception of the administration," he said, noting the strong state of the economy and the low unemployment rate. "That's the thing that could derail him," he said of Gore, "if the economy changes then he's in real trouble."
Of course, what McQuillan forgot to ask Professor Wayne and what the Professor forgot to say himself was that any incumbent candidate is always hurt by a poor economy. Is Wayne a creature of Reuters too?
No, I telephoned Wayne just few minutes ago and he agreed with my presumption and adds that Gore, like any Vice President is a "sort of half-incumbent," and not the chief credit taker or defender of the "faith" which has always made life difficult for Vice Presidents historically seeking the Oval Office. Check your history. Most have been unsuccessful.
I asked Professor Wayne is he would consider himself "right of center." He didn't, and what's more said he was "left of center" so I assumed, wrongly , that writer McQuillan used him as a litmus test against Stephen Hess who described himself to me as a "flaming moderate."
