Conservative opinion-makers took aim at Gore from editorial pages, talk radio and TV chat shows.
"Gore's speech was one no decent politician could have delivered," wrote Washington Post columnist Michael Kelly. "It was dishonest, cheap, low. It was hollow. It was bereft of policy, of solutions, of constructive ideas, very nearly of facts - bereft of anything other than taunts and jibes and embarrassingly obvious lies. It was breathtakingly hypocritical, a naked political assault delivered in tones of moral condescension from a man pretending to be superior to mere politics. It was wretched. It was vile. It was contemptible." [Washington Post, Sept. 25, 2002]
"A pudding with no theme but much poison," declared another Post columnist, Charles Krauthammer. "It was a disgrace - a series of cheap shots strung together without logic or coherence." [Washington Post, Sept. 27, 2002] At Salon.com, Andrew Sullivan entitled his piece about Gore "The Opportunist" and characterized Gore as "bitter."
History of Fear
But this strategy of using the power of modern media to inject career fear deeply into the Washington political process did not begin with the Iraq War. In many ways, it can be traced back to the 1970s when Republicans felt victimized by the Watergate scandal and the exposure of lies that had been used to justify the Vietnam War.
Conservatives were determined that those twin disasters - losing a Republican President in a devastating political scandal and seeing the U.S. population turn against a war effort - should never happen again.
As I describe in Secrecy & Privilege, the initial targets of the Right's strategy in the 1970s and early 1980s were the national news media and the CIA's analytical division - two vital sources of information at the national level.
The U.S. press was blamed for exposing President Richard Nixon's dirty tricks and for spreading dissension that undermined morale in the Vietnam War. CIA analysts had to be brought under control because the driving rationale for the conservative power grab was to be an exaggerated threat assessment of America's enemies.
If the American people saw the Soviet Union as a leviathan coming to swallow the United States, then they would surrender their tax dollars, their civil liberties and their common sense.
Conversely, if the CIA analysts offered a nuanced view of the Soviet Union as a rapidly declining power falling farther behind the West technologically and desperately trying to keep control of its disintegrating sphere of influence, then Americans might favor a shift in priorities away from foreign dangers to domestic needs. Negotiations with the Soviets - not confrontation - would make sense.
So, one of the first battles fought in this historic neoconservative conquest of the U.S. government occurred largely behind the walls of the CIA, beginning in 1976 (under George H.W. Bush's directorship) with the so-called "Team B" assault on the CIA's fabled Kremlinologists.
In the 1980s, this attack on the professional objectivity of the CIA's analytical division intensified under the watchful eye of CIA Director William J. Casey and his deputy, Robert Gates.
Through bureaucratic bullying and purges, the neocons silenced CIA analysts who were reporting evidence of Soviet decline. Instead, a "politicized" CIA analytical division adopted worst-case scenarios of Soviet capabilities and intentions, estimates that justified the Reagan administration's costly arms buildup and covert wars in the Third World.
This strategy was so successful that the battered CIA analytical division largely blinded itself to the growing evidence of the coming Soviet collapse. Then, ironically, when the Soviet Union fell apart in 1990, the neocons were hailed as heroes for achieving the seemingly impossible - the supposedly sudden collapse of the Soviet Union - while the CIA's analytical division was derided for "missing" the Soviet demise.
Pressing the Press
The second important target was the U.S. national press corps. The strategy here was twofold: to build an ideologically conservative news media and to put pressure on mainstream journalists who generated information that undercut the desired message.
"Gore's speech was one no decent politician could have delivered," wrote Washington Post columnist Michael Kelly. "It was dishonest, cheap, low. It was hollow. It was bereft of policy, of solutions, of constructive ideas, very nearly of facts - bereft of anything other than taunts and jibes and embarrassingly obvious lies. It was breathtakingly hypocritical, a naked political assault delivered in tones of moral condescension from a man pretending to be superior to mere politics. It was wretched. It was vile. It was contemptible." [Washington Post, Sept. 25, 2002]
"A pudding with no theme but much poison," declared another Post columnist, Charles Krauthammer. "It was a disgrace - a series of cheap shots strung together without logic or coherence." [Washington Post, Sept. 27, 2002] At Salon.com, Andrew Sullivan entitled his piece about Gore "The Opportunist" and characterized Gore as "bitter."
History of Fear
Conservatives were determined that those twin disasters - losing a Republican President in a devastating political scandal and seeing the U.S. population turn against a war effort - should never happen again.
As I describe in Secrecy & Privilege, the initial targets of the Right's strategy in the 1970s and early 1980s were the national news media and the CIA's analytical division - two vital sources of information at the national level.
The U.S. press was blamed for exposing President Richard Nixon's dirty tricks and for spreading dissension that undermined morale in the Vietnam War. CIA analysts had to be brought under control because the driving rationale for the conservative power grab was to be an exaggerated threat assessment of America's enemies.
If the American people saw the Soviet Union as a leviathan coming to swallow the United States, then they would surrender their tax dollars, their civil liberties and their common sense.
Conversely, if the CIA analysts offered a nuanced view of the Soviet Union as a rapidly declining power falling farther behind the West technologically and desperately trying to keep control of its disintegrating sphere of influence, then Americans might favor a shift in priorities away from foreign dangers to domestic needs. Negotiations with the Soviets - not confrontation - would make sense.
So, one of the first battles fought in this historic neoconservative conquest of the U.S. government occurred largely behind the walls of the CIA, beginning in 1976 (under George H.W. Bush's directorship) with the so-called "Team B" assault on the CIA's fabled Kremlinologists.
In the 1980s, this attack on the professional objectivity of the CIA's analytical division intensified under the watchful eye of CIA Director William J. Casey and his deputy, Robert Gates.
Through bureaucratic bullying and purges, the neocons silenced CIA analysts who were reporting evidence of Soviet decline. Instead, a "politicized" CIA analytical division adopted worst-case scenarios of Soviet capabilities and intentions, estimates that justified the Reagan administration's costly arms buildup and covert wars in the Third World.
This strategy was so successful that the battered CIA analytical division largely blinded itself to the growing evidence of the coming Soviet collapse. Then, ironically, when the Soviet Union fell apart in 1990, the neocons were hailed as heroes for achieving the seemingly impossible - the supposedly sudden collapse of the Soviet Union - while the CIA's analytical division was derided for "missing" the Soviet demise.
Pressing the Press
The second important target was the U.S. national press corps. The strategy here was twofold: to build an ideologically conservative news media and to put pressure on mainstream journalists who generated information that undercut the desired message.
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