Don't get me wrong. I like Al Gore. I've seen his movie, An Inconvenient Truth and mine is one of the 500,000+ names on the message he brought to Congress demanding immediate action to solve the climate crisis. I think he's been one of the most effective advocates for a response to global warming that we've ever had but, if he ever throws his hat in the ring for the Democratic presidential primaries, I won't vote for him.

    Why not? Well, it's a problem I have that apparently I don't share with a large portion of the American electorate. I have a functioning memory. I remember the 2000 election campaign. Many argue that the election was stolen from Gore. It may even be true but, why did the future of the entire country come down to a few hundred screwed-up ballots in Florida in the first place? It should have been a Democratic landslide.

    I think Gore dropped the ball and dropped it badly. I think his eye was too firmly fixed on Bill Clinton's zipper instead of on the real accomplishments of the Clinton administration: a budget surplus, a strong economy, eight years of relative peace and a booming stock market. He should have been embracing Clinton and his legacy, not distancing himself from it.

    Instead, Al Gore chose to play a game of who's the more moral candidate, me or that other guy? And this played into Republican strengths since they had a lock on the Moral Majority crowd (Hey, after 6 years of deficit spending, nearly non-stop scandals and 4+ years of the Iraq debacle, these folks are STILL mostly loyal Republicans!) while it did nothing to drum up enthusiasm among the Democratic base. Worse than that, by playing down his association with the Clinton administration, it left him with very little to differentiate himself from his opponent other than party affiliation.

    Remember those three 90-minute television debates Gore had with GW? They spent more time agreeing on issues than disagreeing (in the second debate, according to one source, they agreed with each other on thirty-seven different issues!). And how could anyone debate George W Bush, a genial former party animal who knew practically nothing about foreign affairs, dodged the draft by getting (through papa's influence) a cushy National Guard gig (and went AWOL in time of war even from that), ran almost every business venture papa's friends backed him in, into the ground and not mop the floor with him?

    I think Gore lost the election less because it was stolen from him then because of his own poor judgment calls. So, while I think he's a wonderful advocate for environmental causes, even, probably, the best EX-vice president we've ever had; when I ask myself, would this guy be my first choice to go head to head across a negotiating table with tough customers like Russia's president Putin or Iran's president Ahmadinejad? The answer is: NO.

This is a copy of a letter I wrote to Congressman Pete Stark (D-13th District, CA) on hearing the March 12th announcement  that he has gone on record acknowledging his nontheism in response to an inquiry from the Secular Coalition for America:

Dear Representative Stark,

I am not in your district and I do not know much about you personally or where you stand politically but it does not matter. I feel that you represent me in a way that my own congressman never has because I, like you, am a freethinker and a nontheist. In an environment where polls show that Americans without a god-belief are more distrusted than any other minority and that the majority of our countrymen would not vote for an atheist even if he or she were the most qualified for office, it takes a great deal of courage to take a public stance on this issue of conscience. That's true for most us. Admitting you don't believe in God can be devastating to family, career and friendships. Few of us do it lightly or without a great deal of soul-searching. I admire your courage and strength of character.

It could be that, if I were in your district, I still might not vote for you. I make my judgments based on how I feel about the political stance of the candidate on the issues, not on his or her race, creed or sexual orientation; but even if I didn't vote for you, you would still be my representative in Congress in a way no other is yet and I thank you and wish you all the best.

Sincerely,

Hugh Kramer

NOTE: This is taken from a talk on the history of church and state relationships that I gave on January 22nd at Ventura's E P Foster Library. Feel free to repost it on your favorite blogsite.
-Credo Absurdum

I'd like to take a moment to talk about the current situation in Iraq because I think it has some bearing on the subject at hand. You can argue about it but this is my interpretation and it's one I haven't heard from any of the talking heads on network news. One of the Bush Administration's major, if at first unstated, goals of the invasion was an ambitious attempt to remake the political equation in the Middle East by imposing democracy, by force, on Iraq. It can be argued that this has been achieved. The turnout for the Iraqi elections was very high and the presence of foreign observers ensured the results by and large accurately reflected the will of the voters.

So Bush got his wish, and that's too bad, because the law of unintended consequences came into effect. There was something the president and his advisers had failed to take into consideration in their plans because they didn't understand the importance of it in their own country. And that is just how crucial it is to keep religion separate from politics. Oh, it's always been there in American politics to a certain extent. After all, no politician who wants to get elected is going to say that he thinks faith in God is unimportant but, until recently, no party ever promoted the idea that theirs was the more God-fearing party and that their platform reflected God's will and the other party's did not.