Born-Again Gore
BARNES, FRED
Born-Again Gore by Fred Barnes Davenport, Iowa Three days before he came here, Vice President Al Gore appeared at a memorial service for slain students in Littleton, Colorado, where he got a...
...Gore’s speech at the memorial service captured some of this...
...What’s the political impact of Gore’s emphasis on Littleton...
...Gore is being dragged down in polls because of his association with an immoral president...
...Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...And Gore will get kudos...
...But Gore also has recognized something more important, the national hunger for a moral response to Littleton...
...Gore also characterizes Littleton in quasi-religious terms...
...Brokaw put him on the spot by asking why he’d been to see The Matrix, a highly violent new movie...
...At a house party in Dubuque to promote his presidential candidacy, he mentioned Littleton first, starting with praise for “those who stared death in the face and affirmed their belief in God...
...But it’s “part of the answer,” Gore said...
...Wherever he goes, Gore says he was deeply moved by his trip to Littleton...
...We have a mandate to choose good over evil...
...Expected to be as small as 10,000 people, it grew to a mammoth audience of 70,000...
...Gore said the movie had a “sophisticated plot in which the action made sense...
...He doesn’t wait for the issue of Littleton to come up...
...Neither Bill Bradley, his Democratic foe, nor most of the Republican presidential candidates have had anything compelling to say about Littleton...
...Afterwards, he went to the library for three local TV interviews...
...We have to make changes...
...He raises it...
...They did not...
...According to Gore, Littleton has “opened up a lot of things,” and he’s eager to seize the opportunity...
...Gore says one parent whispered in his ear, “You’ve got to tell me these children didn’t die in vain...
...He sounds sincere about this, and it’s made him a born-again Hollywood basher...
...And though he talks up gun control, Gore insists the fallout from Littleton cannot be addressed solely by a legislative agenda or improvements in school safety...
...And Gore boasted he’s already been calling Internet executives to seek curbs on violent and pornographic Web sites...
...Now, the country will be watching as he pushes his Littleton agenda...
...The striking thing about Gore’s appearances in Des Moines, Dubuque, and Davenport was that he didn’t overstate his case...
...It was,” says a Gore aide, “the most incredible thing I’ve ever been to...
...The surprise was the size of the crowd in the parking lot of a shopping mall...
...Gore responded, “I promise...
...The boys who killed 12 students and a teacher “simply made a choice in favor of evil over good,” he told Democratic supporters here...
...So when Tom Brokaw invited him to co-host a town meeting on MSNBC on the “lessons of Littleton,” Gore rearranged his schedule and appeared on the stage of a Des Moines high school with 50 people...
...Before the service, Gore and his wife Tipper embraced the parents of all the shooting victims and some of the wounded students...
...And the issue helps exactly where Gore needs help, on the values side...
...Schools are so big that counselors can’t spot the troubled kids who later shoot and kill, Gore suggested...
...He stands pretty much alone on the issue...
...After his speech, Gore led a silent march through the crowd to a wreath-laying ceremony a half-mile away...
...Promise me we will...
...He overreached only when he linked school violence to sprawl, one of his favorite targets...
...Clinton could deliver that message, too, but no one would take him seriously...
...The magnitude of that event is overwhelming,” he told a group of students and teachers in Davenport last week...
...It is a defining cultural event, he believes, and its impact will linger...
...Both the president and Gore sense the country is now more receptive to gun control, and Clinton is fine at delivering the gun control message...
...Brokaw taunted him about all the money Democrats get from Hollywood moguls and dared Gore to criticize them...
...He agreed with evangelist Franklin Graham that America has a “problem of the heart...
...Born-Again Gore by Fred Barnes Davenport, Iowa Three days before he came here, Vice President Al Gore appeared at a memorial service for slain students in Littleton, Colorado, where he got a big surprise and a political dividend...
...He mentioned Cassie Bernall, the 17-yearold who was killed after affirming her Christian faith, by name...
...He said opponents of gun control have a point when they claim it’s not the answer to school violence...
...Like the funeral procession of Princess Diana, Gore and the bereaved parents and kids had flowers strewn in their path...
...For one thing, it helps the Clinton administration to have Gore out front and not Clinton...
...Gore repeated all the liberal boilerplate about gun control, media violence, and the need for more high school guidance counselors and mental health care...
...Gore did...
...When Gore, a straight arrow in his private life, emphasizes the role of right and wrong, good and evil, in Littleton, no one snickers...
...It may be that [Columbine High School in Littleton] was just too big,” he said, adding, “The issue of sprawl doesn’t apply just to communities...
...The speech was stridently delivered and was panned by columnist Richard Cohen of the Washington Post as “stiff and uninspiring...
...He said he’d meet with Hollywood executives and “put it to them...
...He quoted the Bible eight times...
...Promise...
...Only later did he get around to what he calls his “number one priority” of “keeping prosperity going...
...Violence in movies, TV, and video games may not have a bad influence on most kids, he said, but some are “pushed over the line” to commit violent acts...
...The political dividend is that Gore, perhaps more than any politician in the country, now seems to understand the significance of Littleton...
...But in subsequent days, and especially on a trip to Iowa on April 28, Gore has spoken more effectively...
...If he really pressures Hollywood to tone down its movies and TV shows and gets Internet executives to adopt curbs, we’ll all know...
...On Littleton, he’s on the side of good, Christianity, and morality...
...I think Gore’s embrace of Littleton could give his presidential chances a nudge...
Vol. 4 • May 1999 • No. 32
