I expected today’s speech from Al Gore to be good, but I didn’t appreciate what a sweeping and powerful condemnation it would be of the White House, Congress’ perfidy, and what Gore described as a wholesale rejection of constitutional principles. It was, in a word, devastating.
Raw Story has the text of the speech as it was written, though Gore strayed from the text a bit during delivery. C&L and PoliticsTV will have video of the speech fairly soon, but in case they only make portions available, I’d recommend reading the whole thing. Gore’s been on a roll lately, but this was the former Vice President at his best.
Clearly, Bush’s warrantless-search program was the impetus for Gore’s remarks, but the scope of his denunciation went considerably further.
“Can it be true that any president really has such powers under our Constitution? If the answer is ‘yes’ then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited? If the President has the inherent authority to eavesdrop, imprison citizens on his own declaration, kidnap and torture, then what can’t he do?”
There were too many areas of discussion to explore in detail here, but there were a couple of points Gore raised that warrant additional attention. First, Gore is the latest to try and explain why the White House’s description of the NSA surveillance is incomplete.
“The President and I agree on one thing. The threat from terrorism is all too real. There is simply no question that we continue to face new challenges in the wake of the attack on September 11th and that we must be ever-vigilant in protecting our citizens from harm.
“Where we disagree is that we have to break the law or sacrifice our system of government to protect Americans from terrorism. In fact, doing so makes us weaker and more vulnerable.”
Gore also put our current challenges in a helpful historical context.
“Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of missiles poised to be launched against us and annihilate our country at a moment’s notice? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march-when our fathers fought and won two World Wars simultaneously?
“It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same.
On a related note, Gore added:
“There have of course been other periods of American history when the Executive Branch claimed new powers that were later seen as excessive and mistaken. Our second president, John Adams, passed the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts and sought to silence and imprison critics and political opponents.
“When his successor, Thomas Jefferson, eliminated the abuses he said: ‘[The essential principles of our Government] form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation… [S]hould we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty and safety.’
“Our greatest President, Abraham Lincoln, suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War. Some of the worst abuses prior to those of the current administration were committed by President Wilson during and after WWI with the notorious Red Scare and Palmer Raids. The internment of Japanese Americans during WWII marked a low point for the respect of individual rights at the hands of the executive. And, during the Vietnam War, the notorious COINTELPRO program was part and parcel of the abuses experienced by Dr. King and thousands of others.
“But in each of these cases, when the conflict and turmoil subsided, the country recovered its equilibrium and absorbed the lessons learned in a recurring cycle of excess and regret.
“There are reasons for concern this time around that conditions may be changing and that the cycle may not repeat itself…. [W]e are told by the Administration that the war footing upon which he has tried to place the country is going to ‘last for the rest of our lives.’ So we are told that the conditions of national threat that have been used by other Presidents to justify arrogations of power will persist in near perpetuity.”
Also interesting was the fact that former Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), a far-right lawmaker and one of the Clinton impeachment managers, agreed to introduce Gore before his remarks. Now, as it turns out, there was a technical problem and Barr couldn’t deliver his introduction, but that doesn’t change the fact that Barr effectively endorsed Gore’s condemnation. It helps highlight the division between Bush conservatives (whose principles are malleable depending on polls and political circumstances) and actual conservatives (who believe in limited government power no matter which party controls Washington).
And what of the media? Gore’s speech was largely ignored. Because of the Dr. King holiday, all of the TV news outlets are taking it pretty easy today. As my friend Peter Daou noted, the networks had other things on their mind this afternoon.
A former Vice-President of the United States delivers a major speech accusing George W. Bush of breaking the law. What do all three cable news nets cover under the “Breaking News” banner? An overturned tanker truck on a New York highway.
I can appreciate the differences between sitting and former constitutional officers. If, in 1998, Dan Quayle was condemning the Clinton administration, I would not necessarily be surprised if the remarks garnered minimal attention from the TV media and none of the networks carried the speech live. Once in office, presidents and vice presidents have a bully pulpit; once out, generating media attention is a challenge. Bush can give the same “major speech” over and over again with live coverage because he’s in office; Gore can’t because he isn’t. Fine.
Having said that, we’re talking about an hour on a holiday in which the news networks had nothing else to do. Just five years ago, more people voted to elect Gore president than Bush, and today Gore, with support from a high-profile Republican, not only delivered a devastating critique of Bush’s presidency, but also made a little news, calling for “the appointment of a special counsel to pursue the criminal issues raised by warrantless wiretapping of Americans by the President.”
This deserves more than the 12 seconds it will get on Headline News later this afternoon.