Gore rallies state Democrats

TACOMA – In a speech that went from self-deprecating to angrily indignant, former Vice President Al Gore on Friday urged hundreds of Democratic Party faithful to oust a presidential administration that he said has “lost its moral authority” and ordered U.S. troops “to wade into a moral cesspool.”

“We have a responsibility to set this right,” Gore thundered before a crowd of 1,200 Democrats at a hotel in Tacoma. Most had paid $65 each to attend the event, a kickoff event for the three-day state Democratic Party convention.

Gore said Bush had betrayed the nation’s trust by bowing to advisers who argued for a war in Iraq, rather than pressing home victory over terrorists in Afghanistan. It was, he said, as if America, attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor, had instead opted to invade Indonesia.

“We need to find a way to communicate the depths of the irresponsibility they have shown,” Gore said.

More than 1,600 Democratic delegates will spend the weekend in the “City of Destiny,” passing a party platform, electing national delegates, and planning for the campaign. Republicans held their convention last week in Bellevue.

Gore’s 50-minute speech started with humor, as he described life after the White House and Air Force 2. He teaches at several colleges now.

“I’m a visiting professor, or VP for short,” he said. “It’s a way of hanging on.”

But he eventually turned serious, blasting the president and vice president for “squandering” a multi-trillion-dollar federal surplus and letting industry shape environmental and regulatory policies.

“Whenever he (George W. Bush) is in the presence of a wealthy contributor, he is a moral coward, unwilling to say no,” Gore told the crowd, which rose to its feet and cheered.

He blamed the president for the prisoner abuses at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison. Yes, the soldiers should be held accountable, he said.

But the accountability shouldn’t stop there, Gore said. “Private Lynndie England wasn’t the one who made the historic decision that we would no longer honor the Geneva Convention in the treatment of prisoners of war. That was the Bush White House!”

It was exactly the kind of speech that state Republican Party chairman Chris Vance said he hoped Gore would give.

“John Kerry is trying very hard to portray himself as a moderate,” Vance said earlier in the day. “Al Gore screaming and yelling about the Iraq War and attacking the president in very bitter terms is not helpful. I think their anger will be their undoing.”

Here in Washington, Vance predicted, blistering attacks on the president will turn off the moderate suburban voters whose votes comprise the main battleground in Washington politics.

But Gore was a popular man Friday night among the Democratic Party faithful.

“It was the most spirited, incisive and accurate talk I’ve heard Al Gore give on anything,” said Cheryl C. Miller, a Cheney woman serving as an alternate delegate at the convention. “He captured what I’ve been crying about in my heart and mind for the past three years.”

Washington – although not Eastern Washington – has been friendly to Gore. He and former President Bill Clinton beat Republicans by more than 11 percentage points in both 1992 and 1996. It was closer in 2000, when Gore beat Bush by about 5 percentage points.

For its part, the Bush/Cheney campaign seems to be trying to steer the public spotlight toward the reviving American economy. The campaign issued a lengthy statement Friday touting new jobs, recent economic growth and a rise in factory orders.

“It’s becoming clearer every day that the president’s economic and foreign policies are working,” Vance said.

Not so, said Gore.

“The economy is not what it was,” he said. “I’m concerned about the economy. I was the first one laid off.”