Harry S. Truman once said, “A statesman is a politician who’s been dead for 15 years.” That probably still holds true today, except for one caveat: if you have loads of money you can speed up the process.
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past three years, you might have noticed that Al Gore has transformed himself from a stiff, ne’er-do-well establishment candidate for president into a Nobel Prize winning champion of environmental activism.
You also might have noticed that Jimmy Carter has pressed forward on his long march from notoriety as one of the most ill-remembered presidents in U.S. history to reinvention as a Middle East peace broker and hammer-and-nail builder of homes for the needy.
And, just recently, Newt Gingrich has burst back onto the scene in the guise of a bipartisan bastion appearing in television commercials with Nancy Pelosi discussing climate change – only 10 years after being forced out of his House speaker position due to his less-than-statesmanlike attacks on Bill Clinton.
Don’t be confused – helping out the environment is great, we all know that the Middle East needs some attention these days and bipartisanship is great, but one can’t help but wonder what the motives are behind these attempts at revisionist history.
It seems that Al Gore, Jimmy Carter and Newt Gingrich are less interested in talking about solutions for systemic problems than they are in talking about how Al Gore, Jimmy Carter and New Gingrich are trying to find solutions for systemic problems.
Gore, to his credit, appears to be the least engrossed with himself among these three. Unfortunately, a distinguished statesman he is not.
Even Gore’s book and documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” were not particularly influential until the Nobel committee decided to recognize him for … well, it’s not exactly clear. Apparently, these days, making a really good film doesn’t just get you an Oscar, it gets you a Nobel Peace Prize.
Carter, on the other hand, has basically devolved into a shameless self-promoter. Given that his recent trip to the Middle East, which included a visit with leaders of Hamas who have admitted to intentionally murdering civilian women and children, failed to produce any results (as almost every international diplomat predicted), can one reasonably claim the trip was about anything other than the greatness of Jimmy Carter?
Perhaps this isn’t such a surprising move from a man who once, during his infamous “American Malaise” speech, basically told U.S. citizens that they were responsible for the failure of his policies because they just weren’t acting peppy enough.
Gingrich definitely takes the cake, though. Umm … bipartisanship? Does he seriously think that America just collectively forgot about that rabid attempt to convict Bill Clinton of perjury – an attempt that cost taxpayers $15 million over a blowjob? This one is so bad it just speaks for itself.
Unfortunately, this type of maneuvering has become the norm among politicians in this country. Barack Obama, for instance, talks so much about how unique, independent and incorruptible he is that his campaign seems to be less about the politics of change than the politics of conceit.
Does no one else hear echoes of the 2000 Bush campaign in his rhetoric?
In the words of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.”
Unfortunately, the same doesn’t appear to be true for politicians.
