The New Republic

Quell the criticism, Mitt - wear a tie and mess up your hair just a little bit, so that it doesn't appear you just walked out of a wax museum as one of the exhibits. Al Gore did have an exaggeration problem. I know, the left narrative is that Gore was set upon in an illegitimate way in 2000. But if I were a viable candidate for the presidency and I had said that I invented the internet and was the model for the male lead in Love Story, and other interesting tales, I don't think I would be given a pass on this. I really appreciate Andrew over at The Dish. He has gone mad on Israel and he is can be flighty as all get out, but he truly is of no party or clique. Once you start flaking for a political party you start making compromises with truths.

- liberalref

May 13, 2011 at 10:15am

But that's just it, LR -- Gore never said he "invented" the Internet, he just took credit for championing its funding early on, which is absolutely true. Similarly, when he claimed to be the inspiration for the male lead in "Love Story," he was accurately recalling a quote in a newspaper article from seventeen years earlier, and he even hedged his claim by saying that all he knew was what the author had said in the article. In fact, the paper had misquoted the author, but that's hardly Gore's fault, and he recalled the quote (as it had run) accurately. In any case, Milbank deserves some criticism for this item. It's irritating to see smart journalists correctly identify one of the pathologies of their field even as their articles provide a perfect example of it. That's how Milbank can simultaneously identify a frivolous problem ("seeming" ersatz due to superficial factors) while carefully taking note of Romney's outfit and hairstyle. Now, as it turns out, Romney's artificiality is a substantive problem. He actually is hard to see as a genuine figure, but that has nothing to do with his hair. Would it have been that hard to make the same point without mentioning his appearance?

- npippenger@gmail.com-old

May 13, 2011 at 10:38am

"I took the initiative in creating the Internet ..." Al Gore in an interview on March 9, 1999, with Wolf Blitzer of CNN. (a TNR alum! I am old enough to remember reading him in TNR from the early 1980s on). Spinners for Gore tried to have Gore retroactively say what you said he said, mansfeld, but the quote above is Gore in his own words. I didn't think that I would get such a fast confirmation of the flaking phenomenon and immediate blowback from it, at that. There are many Democrats who would make good Republicans, at least stylistically, and when it comes to verisimilitude.

- liberalref

May 13, 2011 at 10:52am

Milbank would have been more accurate to write, "We're giving Mitt Romney an 'Al Gore problem.'" And yes, I'm a little surprised that the fairest, most astute commenter around thinks Al Gore said he "invented" the Internet.

- W_Bombay

May 13, 2011 at 10:53am

Ok, LR, two things: 1. The word you are looking for is "flacking," not "flaking." 2. I know that you generally prefer haughty insults to actual arguments (though until now I had been spared the honor), but in the spirit of the latter I'll simply refer you to the full quote: "I'll be offering my vision when my campaign begins. And it will be comprehensive and sweeping. And I hope that it will be compelling enough to draw people toward it. I feel that it will be. But it will emerge from my dialogue with the American people. I've traveled to every part of this country during the last six years. During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system." Snopes, which deems the accusations against Gore as simply "false," notes that "To claim that Gore was seriously trying to take credit for the 'invention' of the Internet is, frankly, just silly political posturing that arose out of a close presidential campaign. Gore never used the word 'invent,' and the words 'create' and 'invent' have distinctly different meanings — the former is used in the sense of 'to bring about' or 'to bring into existence' while the latter is generally used to signify the first instance of someone's thinking up or implementing an idea." http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp It is possible that some of us just disagree with you and are not (shocking!) partisan hacks.

- npippenger@gmail.com-old

May 13, 2011 at 11:06am

Hillary Clinton had a hell of an Al Gore Problem in 2008, right here in these very pages, as many of her defenders (such as myself) strove mightily to point out at the time. One example that springs to mind is how she got a week of scornful-to-outraged coverage for the "Obama kindergarten essay" incident, which nobody-but-nobody in the media seemed to recognize as a riff on the "Bill and Hillary's college paper wherein they plotted to become presidents together" incident they had collectively propagated widely several weeks before. Now, I won't call it the sharpest satire ever, but many people here (writers and commenters) were so thoroughly in the tank for Obama that it was routinely characterized as mean-spirited Obama-bashing, rather than what it was: an attempt to highlight the absurdity and superficiality of a lot of the primary campaign coverage. Had the same remarks come from Jon Stewart, no doubt many pundits would have shared a chuckle about it -- but Hillary, having been characterized in the minds of many of her opponent's supporters and much of the commentariat as a spiteful, grasping, sold-out rhymes-with-witch, was not deemed eligible to have a satirical media criticism judged on its own terms.

- austinexpat

May 13, 2011 at 11:20am

Yes, liberalref, I don't think you're going to win the Internet argument. Gore got screwed on that one.

- JakeH

May 13, 2011 at 11:48am

I recall a very funny satirical piece (by Michael Kinsley?) on Gore and his tendency to conflate truth and fictional invention, rather than a habit of claiming achievements that weren't his (which was a GOP attack meme and nothing else). What was at issue was the inability to be honest about his childhood and youth, energetically playing up an outdoorsy Tenn. rural background while having, in reality, spent much of his time in DC.

- ironyroad

May 13, 2011 at 1:06pm

What truly matters is that with Gore it was the media's shameless judging by the superficial and trivial, NOT substance; with Romney it really is the substance; it really is merited. This is a man who will say, and flip-flop, on virtually anything, no matter how major and important, purely to get elected.

- RHSerlin

May 13, 2011 at 3:30pm

Oh Lord, to think that serious professionals like Milbank are still regurgitating that substandard stuff that is more than ten years old...

- harasan

May 14, 2011 at 12:33pm

I mostly disagree. I like Al Gore and voted for him every chance I got, but he had a strong inability to connect, even with those who wanted very much to like him. And I was glad that Bush was President just after 9/11, because my gut feel is that Bush knew to rev up the military, while Gore might instead have organized a committee. Unfair, i know, but that was the impression this fan had of him, formed from his own style at the time. The media, at most, reinforced my own gut feeling from his speeches and appearances.

- floydsm8

May 15, 2011 at 1:59am