Friend of Toll House Richard Kramer wrote a television pilot based on The Player with Michael Tolkin years ago.  There was a wonderful line in it that I often quote.  An actress speaking about a recent audition says, “I was their first choice, but they decided to go with their second choice.”  (Richard swears he heard someone say that once.)

I had never thought about it before, but that line also describes the Supreme Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore.  They went with our second choice.  And it still hurts.

As if we needed another reminder of that calamity, our first choice (by popular vote) won the Nobel Peace Prize last week.  Could the contrast between the two men be any clearer?  Gore is a walking reminder of everything we lost in Florida, the “before picture” of competence and responsibility.  No wonder the right has gone completely bat shit about Gore’s Nobel, as Paul Krugman detailed yesterday.  (Jon Stewart has the videotape.)  They will smear him just like anyone else who dares point out the immorality and failure of the current administration.  Fortunately, the country has been through too much not to know the difference.

Or has it?

I had a disturbing conversation last week with a producer friend of mine.  The producer, let’s call him Steve, considers himself a moderate because he voted for Clinton in the nineties but Bush in 2000 and 2004.  He accused me of being “far left,” which I thought was inaccurate and needlessly polarizing.  But what really bugged me was the gist of his argument: “Oh, come on.  Do you really think things are so much worse now?”

“Yes!” I practically shouted.  Did I really have to make the case?

Steve’s cynicism, that “they all do it” form of apathy is incredibly dangerous now, when we are rapidly approaching a point when it will be impossible to undo all the damage done by Bush/Cheney to our environment, economy, military, and standing in the world.  And Steve is not alone.  Here is how the Washington Post concluded its article about Gore’s Nobel win:

Yet, if Bush ever dwells on what might have been, so, too, does the Gore team. "It's hard to look at the disaster of the past seven years and not believe that America would be better off if he had been president," said Ron Klain, Gore's former chief of staff. "Perhaps he has done more for climate change as a private citizen than he could have done as president, but I firmly believe that if Al Gore were president, America would not be at war, our standing in the world would be higher, our economy stronger and our civil liberties more secure."

No one will ever know.

Really?  No way to make an educated guess on that one?  Jesus.  Does anyone really believe things could have played out as badly as they have had Al Gore been in the White House?  Look at what Al Gore said about Iraq before the attack in 2002:

"The vast majority of those who sponsored, planned and implemented the cold-blooded murder of more than 3,000 Americans are still at large, still neither located nor apprehended, much less punished and neutralized," Gore said. "I do not believe that we should allow ourselves to be distracted from this urgent task simply because it is proving to be more difficult and lengthy than predicted."

Would things have been different?  “No one will ever know.”

Please.

We must not slide back into giving the benefit of the doubt to people who don’t deserve it.  Tucker Carlson can shout down Krugman on Bill Maher’s show and accuse him of paranoia, but that doesn’t mean Bush and Cheney aren’t out to get us.  Sticking with Krugman, who is plugging a new book this month, he puts it very well in an interview with Josh Marshall on Talking Points Memo:

“I sometimes say to people who are really to the left of me... ‘While we were having our disputes about policy, we didn’t realize that what was really happening was that Soron was gathering his forces in Mordor and that’s a lot more important than the disputes that we had over what the details of trade policy should be.’”

That should be self evident.  And yet Ralph Nader still argues that there is no difference between the two parties.  (In a heated recent debate with Nader, the great Robert Scheer’s voice quakes as he asks Nader how he can possibly suggest such a thing after the last seven years.)  I have plenty of complaints with the timid Democratic leadership, but the alternative – President Romney or Giuliani – is almost unthinkable.

Hillary Clinton is running a steady and impressive campaign, but the same press corps that destroyed Gore with snide, inaccurate stories in 2000 is starting to pick at her every day.  Even Frank Rich wondered if Hillary will be “the new Al Gore.”  Today, Salon listed all the ways HIllary could still “tank.”  They make some good points, but would the right shoot themselves in the foot this way?  (There’s an old saying: “Democrats have to fall in love, Republicans fall in line.”)  And to be fair to Senator Clinton, despite her sometimes robotic laugh, she never comes off as stiff and unappealing as Gore often did seven years ago.

I’m scared, of course.  There is that anti-Hillary feeling we hear so much about, and there are legitimate concerns about her position on the war and her coziness with corporate interests.  I can’t be the only Democrat who feels in the pit of his stomach a certain “does she have to run this time” uneasiness.

But I still have faith in Hillary, or whoever becomes the Democratic nominee next year.  I’ll tell you why.  James Dobson and other conservative Christian leaders are so unhappy with the Republican field that they are threatening to support a third-party candidate.  I don’t think Dobson and his ilk do anything without cold political calculation, and that includes their professions of religious fervor.  They must think the situation is hopeless for Republicans in 2008.  By pulling their support, they can pretend that the inevitable loss was due to their defection.  It’s the only way to position themselves for the future.

Maybe we’ll go with our first choice this time and be better off.

If the voting machines aren’t tampered with and they don’t “cage” too many Democratic voters and… and...

Wake me up when it’s over.

- Jon