CALL ME SNAKE

But getting back to the exchange I'm rescuing from the "back of the book," as it were: At the time, Gatemouth and I and others had been discussing Bush's failures of "leadership" (I use the term advisedly), as evidenced most recently by his response (or lack thereof) to the Katrina disaster. Given all the president's screwups, lies, deceptions, and general incompetence, someone else speculated, shouldn't a Democrat have a cakewalk to the White House in 2008? Gatemouth offered a cautionary note, sagely pointing out that, so far, none of the people mentioned as possible candidates have showed any "real gumption"--a problem that plagued the Democratic contenders in the last two presidential elections. I agreed with him by and large, as I generally do, and am still grateful for his role in helping me come to terms with an incipient TV issue before it became an actual problem.

Despite my gratitude, I took issue with part of his statement. Al Gore, I countered, showed a lot of gumption in 2004. In fact, you might say he was the epitome of gumption during that election. The only problem was, he ran for office in 2000.