{"id":377,"date":"2004-09-12T11:11:03","date_gmt":"2004-09-12T11:11:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/?p=377"},"modified":"2004-09-12T11:11:03","modified_gmt":"2004-09-12T11:11:03","slug":"a-weak-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/2004\/09\/12\/a-weak-man\/","title":{"rendered":"A Weak Man"},"content":{"rendered":"

Al Gore, talking about the Bush Presidency. From a profile of the former Vice-President in The New Yorker<\/cite><\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe real distinction of this Presidency is that, at its core, he is a very weak man. He projects himself as incredibly strong, but behind closed doors he is incapable of saying no to his biggest financial supporters and his coalition in the Oval Office. He\u2019s been shockingly malleable to Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and the whole New American Century bunch. He was rolled in the immediate aftermath of 9\/11. He was too weak to resist it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not of the school that questions his intelligence,\u201d Gore went on. \u201cThere are different kinds of intelligence, and it\u2019s arrogant for a person with one kind of intelligence to question someone with another kind. He certainly is a master at some things, and he has a following. He seeks strength in simplicity. But, in today\u2019s world, that\u2019s often a problem. I don\u2019t think that he\u2019s weak intellectually. I think that he is incurious. It\u2019s astonishing to me that he\u2019d spend an hour with his incoming Secretary of the Treasury and not ask him a single question. But I think his weakness is a moral weakness. I think he is a bully, and, like all bullies, he\u2019s a coward when confronted with a force that he\u2019s fearful of. His reaction to the extravagant and unbelievably selfish wish list of the wealthy interest groups that put him in the White House is obsequious. The degree of obsequiousness that is involved in saying \u2018yes, yes, yes, yes, yes\u2019 to whatever these people want, no matter the damage and harm done to the nation as a whole\u2014that can come only from genuine moral cowardice. I don\u2019t see any other explanation for it, because it\u2019s not a question of principle. The only common denominator is each of the groups has a lot of money that they\u2019re willing to put in service to his political fortunes and their ferocious and unyielding pursuit of public policies that benefit them at the expense of the nation.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Al Gore, talking about the Bush Presidency. From a profile of the former Vice-President in The New Yorker: \u201cThe real distinction of this Presidency is that, at its core, he is a very weak man. He projects himself as incredibly strong, but behind closed doors he is incapable of saying no to his biggest financial… Continue reading A Weak Man<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-policy-culture"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5heLP-65","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}