It began when Al Gore was a young man...
In the fall of 1968 Al Gore claimed that
he'd influenced the nomination acceptance speech of Hubert Humphrey
through conversations with a Chicago Sun columnist. Al Gore asserted
he was Humphrey's ghost writer, but the columnist said that he had
nothing to do with that speech. Al Gore's claim wasn't true.
In 1987 Al Gore told the DesMoines Register
as he began his Presidential campaign that his youthful reporting
had led to the indictment and imprisonment of several people, but
that wasn't true.
In August 1987 the Los Angeles Times
reported that Gore had bragged that half of his Presidential Campaign
staff were women, but it wasn't true.
In February of 1988 the Washington Post
quoted Al Gore that he been shot at in Vietnam. It wasn't true. That
claim was shot down by Newsweek in December of 1999.
In April 1988 Al Gore told a League of
Women Voters gathering that he had written the law of Superfund. Recently
he changed his story because the real author of the Superfund law
was James Florio.
On October 30, 1992, Gore denied that
there was a dump on his father's farm, but national television showed
the pictures.
On January 24, 1997, regarding the Buddhist
Temple event, Al Gore said on the Today Show that "I did not
know it was a fundraiser."
On December 15, 1997, Time magazine reported
that Al Gore claimed that he and Tipper had served as role models
for the Eric Segal novel, Love Story. That wasn't true.
On March 9, 1999, Al Gore told Wolf Blitzer
on CNN that "I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
It wasn't true. The Department of Defense got the Internet underway
in 1969. Al Gore was 21 in 1969.
On April 25, 1999, Al Gore told the Detroit
chapter of the NAACP that his father was a fighter for civil rights,
but he didn't tell them that his father had voted against the Civil
Rights Act of 1964.
On June 1, 1999, at a Women for Gore
event, Al Gore said he'd always been pro- choice, but that wasn't
true. As a Congressman he had voted pro-life on many occasions.
On October 14, 1999, Al Gore's website
proclaimed that he'd worked for the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty for 20
years, but that claim wasn't true. As late as 1992 Al Gore had opposed
that Treaty on the Senate floor.
On November 1, 1999, Time magazine reported
that Al Gore had claimed to have authored the Earned Income Tax Credit.
That wasn't true. The Earned Income Tax Credit was passed into law
in 1975 and Al Gore didn't even enter Congress until 1977.
On November 24, 1999, The New York Times
reported that Al Gore claimed to have been a co-sponsor of the McCain
Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Bill. But Al Gore never served in
the Senate with Senator Feingold. It wasn't true.
On December 23, 1999, ABC News reported
that Al Gore flatly declared that "I live on a farm today."
Al Gore lived then and he lives now at the Naval Observatory on Massachusetts
Avenue in the District of Columbia. The Observatory is not a farm.
Al Gore's statement wasn't true.
On February 4, 2000, The New York Times
reported that Al Gore claimed to have spoken to a crowd of 3,000 people,
but the room at which he spoke at had a maximum capacity of 1,200.
It wasn't true.
On February 15, 2000, Al Gore asserted
that he had never grown tobacco on the farm that he owned in Tennessee,
but the Wall Street Journal in 1995 and Cox News Service in 1999 reported
that tobacco had indeed been grown on that farm.
On April 11, 2000, Al Gore was reported
by the Boston Globe to be trumpeting that he had his own meeting with
Gorbachev, but the Globe reported that 26 other members of Congress
had been present at that mass meeting. It just wasn't true.
In June of 2000 Al Gore said "I
introduced the very first free t.v. legislation in the Senate in 1988,"
but more than 150 bills on that subject had been previously introduced
in previous Congresses. It just wasn't true.
In his acceptance speech at the August
Democratic Convention, Al Gore said that the Bush tax cut would benefit
the middle class by only $.62 per week. But that wasn't true.
On August 28th Al Gore told a gathering
of Florida seniors that his dog, Shilo, and his mother-in-law took
the same arthritis drug, but that his mother-in-law paid three times
as much as the dog did and that wasn't true. Al Gore won't even answer
questions about whether his mother-in-law pays anything for her drugs.
At a convention of Teamsters on September
18th, Al Gore said that one of the lullabies of his that he'd been
sung to as a child had been a union song. Then he sang a few words
of it, but the song he sang hasn't written until Al Gore was in his
20s. It simply wasn't true.
On September 22nd Al Gore told the Associated
Press that he'd been part of a discussions on strategic petroleum
reserve since the days it was first established. But that reserve
was established in 1975 and Al Gore did not enter Congress until 1977.
In the weekend before the first presidential
debate, Al Gore complained that he had never been invited to appear
on a PBS documentary about presidential debates. But PBS officials
said they had indeed invited Al Gore and Al Gore's staff confirmed
that he had rejected the invitation.
At the presidential debate on October
3, 2000, Al Gore claimed that a girl had to stand in the classroom
of Sarasota High School and was still standing, but it wasn't true.
The principal of the high school went on national television to say
so.
In the same debate, Al Gore said that
he'd worked with former President Ronald Reagan on defense issues,
but that wasn't true. Al Gore had opposed Ronald Reagan on defense
issues.
In the same debate, Al Gore was asked
what had meant when he attacked Governor Bush as lacking the experience
to be President. Al Gore told moderator Jim Lehrer he had never said
such a thing, but he had. And so had his staff on many occasions.
It wasn't true.
In the same debate, Al Gore said he took
a risk in asking the former Prime Minister of Russia Chernomyrdin
to become involved in negotiating an end of the conflict in Kosovo.
The New York Times reported that the Russian President Yeltsin had
designated Mr. Chernomyrdin as special envoy to the Balkans and had
done so two weeks before Chernomyrdin had met with Mr. Gore. Mr. Gore's
claim simply wasn't true.
In the same debate, Mr. Gore said that
he'd accompanied Jamie Lee Witt, the head of the federal government's
emergency response team, to catastrophic fires in Texas, but that
wasn't true. He didn't accompany Mr. Witt and he didn't go to those
fires. He made it up. It wasn't true.
Television commentator Morton Kondracke
says Al Gore suffers from a Forrest Gump complex.
The New York Times quotes a professor
of psychology in saying that Al Gore's record is "like the false
memory syndrome where people end up believing that they were abducted
by aliens."
The head of the California Democratic
Party says that he cannot explain Al Gore's behavior because he is
not a "psychiatrist."
The Washington Post quotes a veteran
democrat as saying that Al Gore's record is "dangerous because
it reinforces a dangerous perception that Gore is just another arrogant
politician and we have 8 more years of lies ahead of us."
Former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley
asked Al Gore at a New Hampshire debate "Why should we believe
you will tell the truth as President if you don't tell the truth as
a candidate?" Why indeed? In matters large and matters small,
in matters three decades old and three days old, Al Gore has not told
the truth as a Senator, as a Vice President, as a nominee for President.
Al Gore has not told the truth.
In front of 50 million Americans in the
first presidential debate on at least six separate matters, Al Gore
did not tell the truth. If there is one thing certain about Campaign
2000 it's that you cannot trust Al Gore. You simply cannot trust Al
Gore.
_____________________
Hugh
Hewitt is the host of the nationally syndicated radio talk show
The Hugh Hewitt Show.
