Previously on TheAngryPen:

09-12-2000 2 Parties

08-18-2000 Al’s Acceptance

08-10-2000 Gore’s Choice

08-03-2000 The American Dream

07-20-2000 History and Hollywood

07-13-2000 40 Acres and a Mule

07-06-2000 The God We Trust

06-29-2000 Lyrical Assault

06-15-2000 Bank Fees

06-07-2000 A Mixture Often of Incongruous Elements

05-24-2000 Social Security

05-17-2000 Governmental Good Intentions

05-10-2000 Johnny Reb and Disgusting Fatbodies

05-03-2000 Low Fidelity

04-26-2000 Jackboots and Black Helicopters

04-19-2000 Movie Trailers

04-12-2000 All Things Cuban

04-05-2000 Censorship

03-29-2000 Juries and Tobacco

03-22-2000 Several Things

03-15-2000 Gore the Reformer

03-08-2000 Mission to Mars

03-08-2000 Super Tuesday

03-03-2000 Little Johnny Murderer

03-01-2000 Bob Jones

02-23-2000 The Christian Coalition

02-16-2000 Valentine's Day

02-09-2000 Short-Sighted Political Parties

02-02-2000 Mosh Pits

01-12-2000 Al Gore's Personality

11-17-1999 Playboy

09-02-1999 The Demise of Heavy Metal

	TheAngryPen vs. Gore the Reformer

Mooooom, he's doing it again... make him stop!

OK, we all know that the McCain voters are the key to winning this election. How could we not? The press reminds us of this about as often as my heart beats. What we really should be paying attention to is how the candidates are going about pursuing those votes. So far, the depths of disingenuousness to which Gore seems willing to sink seem amazing only if you are somehow able to forget that we're finally on the good side of eight years of Bill Clinton. Gore is doing what Gore always does: trying to convince us he's something he's not. This time, he wants us to believe that it is he, not John McCain, who is the real campaign finance reformer. Oh, please.

Gore came out of his Super Tuesday win with the following doozie: if Bush will agree to do the same, he tells us with a dramatic, holier-than-thou flair, he will agree not to use unlimited "soft money" contributions in his presidential campaign. Oh Al, how generous of you. How brave. How courageous. How do we keep letting him get away with this stuff!?

Al Gore is a very, very smart man. He knows that this agreement would hurt Bush much more than it would hurt him. Nearly half of Gore's war chest comes from federal election funds, which are not soft money and would therefore not be affected by this pact. And he knows damn well that Bush, having realized he could raise more money on his own, chose not to accept those same federal matching funds six months ago. He also knows that, as a sitting Vice President, he is less dependent upon the kind of publicity that soft money usually buys, like TV ads, for instance. Al is on TV all day, every day anyway, just for showing up at the office. And so he's put Bush between a rock and a harder rock.

It really is a brilliant move. Bush can either accept, and deny himself the funds he'll need to win the election, or he can tell Al to go jump in a lake. Problem is, by refusing to accept the challenge, Bush comes off looking like he has something to hide. A refusal would suggest that there is something illegal about the "soft money" that Gore doesn't really need, but that Bush can't win without. Neither solution is very attractive. Sort of like forcing Bush to answer the question "when did you stop beating your wife?"

But what's really repugnant about all this is that Gore is making this offer, not because campaign finance reform is a cause in which he believes deeply, but because he wants to have something to point to when people start asking him, rightly so, about the good old Buddhist Temple incident. He'll say, "yes, I made a mistake, but now I'm committed to changing the rules for the better, and if George Bush truly believes in government by and for the people, he will agree to forever banish this corrupting influence from our great political process." As if accepting soft money donations is even in the same league as the actual, bona-fide, card-carrying crimes committed over at the Buddhist Temple. And even though prosecutors nailed an underling, not Gore himself, with five felony convictions in the Temple incident, no one who beat up on Ronald Reagan with such relish for not knowing what Ollie North was up to in Nicaragua should be in such a hurry to accept the same limp-wristed excuse from Al Gore.

John McCain is a man who may have sacrificed his political future by going against his party and throwing himself upon the sword of campaign finance reform. That takes real conviction, my friends... actual cojones of steel! Al Gore became a campaign finance "reformer" at the exact same moment when the Buddist Temple issue returned to Prime Time. There is no sacrifice here, no act of contrition. Nevertheless, in the tradition of his soon-to-be-former boss, from whom he learned very well, Mr. Gore expects us to believe that being sorry for a crime is just as good as not having committed the crime in the first place. Do we really want another four years of this nonsense?

To try to suggest to the McCain voters that John McCain and Al Gore are cut from the same cloth is insulting, and The Pen, for one, will not stand for it.

Which, of course, is what you people pay me for.