Save The Last Dance For Me
Margaret Carlson
Al Gore's concession speech was not as good as the reviews would
have it. Quoting his father about how defeat shakes the soul was
the right touch of poignancy. Saying he would be mending fences
in Tennessee admitted how much it hurt to be rebuffed at home.
Invoking the cliched "It's time for me to go" so elegiacally
displayed the mordant, subtle humor of one who accepts that life
is mad. Finally we glimpsed the Gore who, according to those who
love him most, always existed.
But the encomiums were overdone by a commentariat that praises
freely only when it comes to bury. Gore went gently into that
good night because, as New York Timesman Thomas Friedman put it,
someone had "to take a bullet for the country."
Rob Reiner was present for the dying of the light. He had stopped
over at the Gores' for a roast-chicken dinner after hosting an
event for his I Am Your Child foundation. He was polishing off
his lemon tart when word came that the U.S. Supreme Court ruling
was imminent. They flipped on CNN in the dining room, and Reiner
watched transfixed with Tipper and three of the children while
Gore got on the phone for a conference call with his lawyers.
"There we were getting the opinion, slow page by slow page over
the fax machine, as CNN was reporting on us getting the opinion.
It was The Truman Show." At first, Reiner said, Gore was
encouraged that while there was an equal-protection problem, it
could be fixed by making the standard for counting votes uniform.
But he was crushed when the court imposed a deadline by which it
couldn't possibly be fixed.
Gore wanted to sleep on it. He bucked up the weeping kids and
sent everyone to bed. But no amount of sleep could soften an
unsigned opinion tossed over history's transom like a ransom note
penned by Kafka. You have to wonder if the Supreme Court, instead
of reading election results, is now in the business of making
them. The court warned that its ruling was custom fit: "Our
consideration is limited to the present circumstances...equal
protection...generally presents many complexities." You bet it
does: like flawed machines that disproportionately failed to
record legally cast votes in inner-city precincts. Or the purging
of voter rolls by a firm hired by Bush's brother that
disproportionately disenfranchised blacks.
When Reiner came back the next day for a long-planned Christmas
party, Gore was putting the finishing touches on his speech. Gore
asked him what he thought of turning back on himself a campaign
slogan originally directed at Bush. Reiner thought "It's time for
me to go" sounded the perfect note. Afterward they partied the
night away.
For Gore this is the time in life, the right tragedy, the right
male-pattern baldness to occasion a full-fledged midlife crisis.
With his first dream dashed, he could reach for a second act more
suited to his brainy, scientific gifts. More likely the second
act he hopes for is a second chance. But even though he won the
popular vote and, for all we'll ever know, the electoral one, his
own party is complaining that had he won bigger, he wouldn't have
needed to be worried over a few thousand uncounted ballots.
Democrats don't like their losers, even good ones.
|