Al Gore & Maureen Dowd

Bob Herbert of the New York Times has a column in the October 13, 2007 edition of the Times which talks about Al Gore. In the column he writes out that Gore lost in 2000 not because of his stand on the issues, but because of the media's concentration on his personality. Herbert writes:

Mr. Bush came to mind because, for all of the obvious vulnerabilities he exhibited in 2000, it was not him but Mr. Gore who was mocked unmercifully by the national media. And the mockery had nothing to do with the former vice president’s positions on important policy issues. He was mocked because of his personality.

In the race for the highest office in the land, we showed the collective maturity of 3-year-olds.

Herbert doesn't point out, though, that one of the biggest offenders in the media for that kind of reporting is his colleague at the New York Times, Maureen Dowd. Her continuous mocking of Gore in the most influential newspaper in America had to have consequences.

Yet, neither she, nor for that matter any other journalist/pundit who engaged in that kind of writing has ever, to my knowledge, apologized for what they did in 2000. Just once it would be nice if a writer like Maureen Dowd said something like "you know, I was wrong about Gore in 2000 and looking back I wish I hadn't written some of the things that I wrote." Such an admission, though, would require an act of humility that national pundits just seem incapable of committing.