SOURCE: http://www.opinionjournal.com/
best/?id=110010097
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From a puff piece on Al Gore by Time magazine's Eric Pooley:
He says he has "fallen out of love with politics," which is shorthand for both his general disgust with the process and the pain he still feels over the hard blow of the 2000 election, when he became only the fourth man in U.S. history to win the popular vote but lose a presidential election. In the face of wrenching disappointment, he showed enormous discipline--waking up every day knowing he came so close, believing the Supreme Court was dead wrong to shut down the Florida recount but never talking about it publicly because he didn't want Americans to lose faith in their system. That changes a man forever.
The italics, amazingly enough, are in the original. Does Pooley really expect us to believe this? This is, after all, the guy who keeps going around saying he "used to be the next president." He doesn't talk about Florida like John Kerry* doesn't talk about Vietnam.
There's also something odd about Gore's statement that he's "fallen out of love with politics." People fall in love, but do they fall out of love? Seems to us the transition between being in love and being out of love is more like drifting or being shaken--or being shaken and then drifting--than falling.
Then again, Gore married his wife, Tipper, 37 years ago tomorrow (happy anniversary, kids!), when he was just 22, and by all accounts they have a very happy marriage. Maybe his mangled metaphor is the result of never having experienced romantic failure, in which case it's sort of sweet.
* The haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who
by the way lost Florida by 380,978 votes.
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SOURCE: http://www.opinionjournal.com/
best/?id=110010097
