'It Was Eight Years Ago Today (But It Seems Like Eighty)'

I haven't yet finished reading this article by Erica Jong, writing in The Huffington Post, but I'll post some of it now. I would suggest we continue reading it.

In the year 2000, that great and glorious year that was supposed to "change everything," I wrote an article for ELLE magazine called "Bushwhacked." I can't remember what they retitled it. It was published in the late summer of 2000, two or three months before the presidential election.

I think I said -- (can't find the damned thing) -- that I was absolutely disgusted by the campaign then in progress. I had met Al Gore at a fundraiser and thought he was brilliant. And a good speaker. And a decent guy. I couldn't understand the press about him, which seemed to me to assault him for possessing functioning brain cells. I was astounded that journalists seemed to love this dumb frat boy named George W., who glad-handed the press while they made fun of this brilliant man (Al Gore) who had a good grip on foreign policy, the environment, the economy (we had a surplus then, remember?) social issues, civil rights for minorities and majorities (women's rights).

Plus -- his wife Tipper Gore wanted us to address the problem of depression in America as a mental health issue. She understood that we were losing an opportunity if we failed to understand the epidemic of depression in adults and adolescents. Here was a smart woman with a smart husband, a woman who cared about the health of the electorate vs. a smirky dumb-ass who lied about his drinking and sobriety, lied about his National Guard Record and had a wife who nodded behind him as if she had no ideas she wanted to express -- which turned out not to be true -- but that came years later.

Al Gore was so obviously the superior candidate that it seemed absurd that anyone would ever consider voting for George W. Bush.

But the press hated Gore and loved Dubya -- as he was then called. Monica Lewinsky was still occasionally in the news -- though she was long gone from Bill Clinton's life. And Al Gore hadn't cheated on Tipper, but what the hey! Guilt by association. No one questioned it. They were both Democrats, weren't they? And Gore was too nerdy for America. Or so they said. We never questioned journalists about why they hated him so. We never questioned getting raving opinion on our news pages instead of hard news. We never questioned that the presidency was a popularity contest. . . .