Gore Goes After Bush

Ouch:

George W. Bush as Neville Chamberlain?

That's the comparison Al Gore makes in Vanity Fair's environmentally correct "Green Issue."

The former veep — President Bush's 2000 election opponent — keeps insisting that he has no intention of running again for the White House.

But that hasn't stopped him from writing a gasket-blowing polemic arguing that by refusing to face up to the threat of global warming, Bush is just like the disgraced British prime minister who appeased the Nazis before World War II.

"Where there is no vision, the people perish," Gore writes, quoting the Bible to bash Bush.

Warning that Bush and the Republican Congress have displayed "a blinding lack of awareness" about "the worst catastrophe in the history of human civilization" — global warming — Gore also blames the incumbent for ignoring the threat of 9/11.

Bush "was warned on Aug. 6, 2001, of an attack by Al Qaeda. 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US,' said the intelligence community in a message so important that it was the headline of the President's daily briefing that day, five weeks before the attacks," Gore seethes.

"Didn't he see that clear warning?" asks Gore. "Why were no questions asked, meetings called, evidence marshaled, clarifications sought?"

As for Bush's slow response to Hurricane Katrina, "Once again an urgent warning was ignored. The videotapes of one session make clear that the President heard the warnings but, again, asked not a single question."

Americans are finally acknowledging "that Katrina, as horrible as it was, may have been the first sip of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us over and over again," Gore rants.

Like Gore or not, every progressive had better hope that he does run for president in 08. That he doesn’t currently hold office gives him the latitude, the freedom, to say things that candidates who still have to worry about a political career will never risk saying. He has the potential to be Al Sharpton with more credibility—and best of all, he knows it.