Gore’s Stance Is Unfiltered Cynicism
Tragedy is politically fashionable. In an age of Victim Power, the political parties paraded victims of disease, crime and accident at their conventions as moral avatars to the nation.
The star of sobs was Vice President Al Gore, who used his sister’s death from lung cancer to promote President Clinton’s war on cigarette smoking by teenagers.
I use “used” advisedly.
Nancy Gore Hunter started smoking at 13, Gore told the delegates. She died of lung cancer at the age of 45. “I knelt by her bed and held her hand. And in a very short time her breathing became labored and then she breathed her last breath.”
His conclusion was dramatic: “Until I draw my last breath, I will pour my heart and soul into the cause of protecting our children from the dangers of smoking.”
But Gore’s sister’s death in 1984 didn’t motivate him to pour his heart and soul into the fight against smoking. In 1985, as a Tennessee senator, he voted against raising cigarette taxes. He continued to take campaign contributions from tobacco interests from 1984 to 1990, and defended tobacco price supports, though he also voted to restrict in-flight smoking and put tougher warning labels on cigarettes.
The Gores stopped raising tobacco on their family farm at some point after Nancy Gore Hunter’s death, but Al Gore didn’t stop presenting himself as a tobacco farmer.
Running for president in the 1988 primaries, Gore explicitly sold himself to North Carolina tobacco farmers as one of their own: “Throughout most of my life, I raised tobacco. I want you to know that with my own hands, all of my life, I put it in the plant beds and transferred it. I’ve hoed it. I’ve dug in it. I’ve sprayed it, I’ve chopped it, I’ve shredded it, spiked it, put it in the barn and stripped it and sold it.”
Why, four years after his sister’s death from lung cancer, was he bragging about raising and selling the crop that killed her?
Cynics would say: To win votes, and cover up his elitist background (senator’s son, Harvard) with a good-old-boy patina.
Gore, asked why after his convention speech, said he’d been “continuing to grow into a new way of understanding the issue.” For a Harvard man, he seems to be slow at understanding the obvious.
The vice president also blamed the “numbness that prevented me from integrating into all aspects of my life the implications of what that tragedy really meant.”
Clinton’s former political adviser, Dick Morris, is probably using that to explain his gabby hooker to his wife: I was prevented from integrating into all aspects of my life the implications of our marriage vows.
If his sister’s death didn’t make Gore an anti-tobacco crusader, what did? When did this “until my last breath” determination start? I’d say it started when it became politically viable.
Smoking isn’t just a dangerous habit. It’s a dangerous habit that can be blamed on someone else.
Because nicotine is addictive, smokers don’t have to take personal responsibility for taking up the habit: They can blame the tobacco companies for getting them hooked as kids. They can even sue for millions of dollars for suffering the known consequences of their smoking.
Of course, Joe Camel is designed to make young people think that smoking is cool, daring and sophisticated. And many smokers get hooked in their teens, when they think that nothing bad could ever happen to them.
But it is possible to quit smoking. People do it all the time, and most quit cold turkey, without the help of a program. They just take responsibility for their actions, and they stop doing it.
Young people need to hear that message: Your decisions have consequences. If you get yourself addicted to a dangerous drug, it’s your own fault. It’s your obligation to quit before it kills you.
At the 1992 convention, Gore used the story of his son’s near-fatal accident to present himself as a devoted family man. In 1996, he used his sister to present himself as a dedicated foe of tobacco companies.
What’s next in 2000? His great-aunt’s gall bladder operation? I don’t want to know about it.
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