Democrats, John Kennedy died 43 years ago. Deal with it.

I have to take issue with certain implications in my blogmate Walldon’s post on the “new Al Gore” earlier today. It's an inside-the-family rant that has building like a lava dome for a long time, and it took a virtual soulmate to trigger it. We Democrats have an extremely serious problem that has been hurting us since 1963. I see very little different in Gore today from the Gore of 2000. He still stands for exactly the same things he did then, even if, not being a candidate per se, he can be a bit more fearless in his delivery. I knew exactly what he stood for then, as I do now. We continue to search for the perfect candidate, the one who, somehow, someway, will fill the horrible hole in our liberal psyches left by the assassination of John Kennedy. John Kennedy was who he was, and there will never be another John Kennedy. There was never a John Kennedy before him, either. In fact, John Kennedy was not John Kennedy until after he died.

This obsession with the personality characteristics and cultural imagery of a candidate is an obsession of losers, unwilling to embrace anyone who is not guaranteed to be successful in the next election. It causes us to constantly carp at every Democrat who emerges in the public eye, resulting in ammunition being created for the other side, but probably more important, loss of commitment to a candidate on our own side. It plays right into the hands of the Republican Party, which, having long ago lost America on policy, has umpteen zillions of dollars to spend on raising issues of pure mass distraction – whether it be Gore’s “prevarications,” Kerry’s windsurfing or swift-boating, or Hillary’s ambition.

I found nothing wrong – nothing whatsoever wrong – with Al Gore the man as a candidate in 2000. I found him neither wooden -- I don’t even know what that means, much less why I should care -- nor lacking in commitment to the principles of the Democratic Party for which he was an ardent exponent. Al Gore was defeated, first, by shenanigans in states where Republicans controlled the election machinery and manipulated it without shame – Gore, did, after all, win the national popular vote even in the face of that corruption – and by a mainstream press that, for reasons less than clear, collectively as a pack of hyenas, possibly goaded by Republican Iagos who nevertheless were able to sit back and watch the press do their dirty work for them, went on a relentless attack on Gore presenting him as a serial liar – when, in fact, every single one of the alleged lies or exaggerations by Gore, from inventing the internet, to Love Canal to Love Story to his family’s farm in Tennessee, was a complete fabrication. Remember the “mean” meme and the “sighs” when Gore quite properly could not stomach the flat-out lies that Bush told in the first debate?

Al Gore was a solid person with impeccable public policy credentials and an extraordinary record of public service. His articulation of policy during the debates destroyed George Bush in any objective sense. But the schoolyard bullies in the Big Media decided he was “wooden” and a liar, someone who would “say anything” to get elected. Like junior high classmates afraid of not going along with the bullies, everyone else fell into line. Even Democrats fearful of not being accepted by the reporters and pundits on the national stage decided they better go along with it.

John Kerry was a legitimate candidate, a good and solid person with impeccable public policy credentials, a history of commitment to the principles of the Democratic Party, an articulate speaker, and an extraordinary record of public service. He won the Democratic primaries decisively. He destroyed George Bush in every respect in the debates, and yet there we were, following our death wish and carping at his New England heritage and accent, or at his “stiffness” – is that different from “wooden”? – and other completely irrelevant personal and cultural characteristics, all the while pining away for some other candidate who unfortunately never entered the primaries. Kerry did, indeed, get some very bad advice from his consultants, but personally he was not a weak candidate except when held up to the imaginary standard of an imaginary John Kennedy. How many times did I hear a liberal Democrat say of Kerry, “He just doesn’t excite me”? To me, that was an unconscionably childish sentiment. What is this, an election deciding the future of our country and our children, or a rock concert?

FDR had a patrician air far beyond any of our modern Coastal candidates. Truman? God knows, he was a nobody with personality flaws that only in retrospect look, correctly, like strengths. Kennedy was a waffler as well as a womanizer, no matter how quick he was with the disarming press conference quip. Clinton – don’t even bother asking. (Can you even imagine the hand-wringing we would have done over Licoln's dour personality, had he been a memner of our party?) I have issues with Hillary, concerns about Gore, Kerry, Edwards, Feingold, Mark Warner and even Obama, worries about the electability of all of them. But there is one critical thing that absolutely trumps any of it: they are Democrats, period. In this day and time anyway, that’s good enough for me. Whether it is Gore, Hillary, Feingold, Kerry, Edwards, Obama, or for that matter Harry Reid, Dennis Kucinich, Nancy Pelosi, I will have no trouble supporting the candidate enthusiastically.

Write it 1000 times on the blackboard: "substance over style, substance over style, substance over style." And then "policy counts, policy counts, policy counts." And then go out and support the Democratic candidate without reservation. That's the formula.