Despite the fact that President-Elect Obama and Gaffe-master Joe Biden claimed a crushing victory on the bruising path to the white house, Sarah Palin has taken part in a FOX NEWS analog to Al Gore's masterpeice whine-fest, An Inconvenient Truth. In this documentary, Al Gore exerts a poor effort appealing to the public to show concern for their environment, probably due to his attempt to frame his evangelical-style ecomongering as the big-picture reason he "should have won" in 2000.
But come on, Mrs. Palin, at least Mr. Gore almost won. And if he HAD won, at least he would have been President. But you had to do it, having failed to learn your lesson: STAY AWAY from the video cameras. In Governor Sarah Palin: An American Woman, Palin assails the media for their coverage of her personal affairs. I know this crazy hyper-communicating high-technology world must be tough for you arctic dwellers, but please try and understand that BECOMING THE VICE PRESIDENT means that people are going to analyze you, your motives, your actions, your personal life, your family--everything. That's why we call the position "public office". I'm sorry for the stress we all put on you. It's probably a good thing you didn't win, because you proved our greatest fear right: you can't handle the pressure.
And what have we really learned from the past 8 years? For one thing, we learned that John Kerry wasn't as shifty as he seemed on the stage. We thought we couldn't ever trust the man, which is ironic when you consider that he was the only loser that actually had a fair post-mortem documentary assessment of exactly why he lost to a ruinous fool of an incumbent. With in-fighting, power grubbing campaigners, competing interests and the Republican Party retaining most of their zombie-like unquestioning supporters for Bush in 2004, Kerry's loss was guaranteed. Inside the Bubble gave us some insight to the specifics.
Having a loser make a long, drawn out, reality-television style statement about why they lost the presidential election is a relatively new tactic. Quayle wrote a book, I think. The unfortunate part about this is that there are plenty of interesting losers throughout history who could have capitalized on their life experiences even better than people like Gore and Palin.
Examples? Well, let's talk about Jack Kemp: All American.
Yes, Jack Kemp was an All-American who shortly played in the NFL (when there was still an AFL!) He ran on Dole's ticket in 1996. But there's an even better historical example of an extremely successful loser, a more seasoned loser, a real "no holds barred" loser.
Former Governor Paterson has finally admitted that his obesity tax--a lasting legacy no politician deserves--was an illogical half-measure directed at a quick fix.
