Tucker Carlson Says Al Gore Is Like George Bush

It had to be the most preposterous segment in the history of cable television to witness Tucker Carlson say Al Gore and George Bush have much in common.

Granted, Tucker’s comments were sandwiched between the expressions of sneering contempt that he holds for Gore. Sadly, the guests on the show either lacked the intellectual firepower or minimal courage necessary to rebut this incredibly bizarre and laughable analysis from the host.

Here is the answer that should have been forcefully stated.

On what matters, Al Gore and George Bush have zero in common, and in fact, Gore is the exact antithesis of everything Bush stands for and does.

In Al Gore’s world, there is a war of the worlds between an oil-based economy and the harm it does to the world, and an alternative energy-based economy and all the good it would do.

In Gore’s world the oil-based economy furthers a planetary emergency. Government and capital should support alternatives to oil, and the Kyoto agreements are the starting point for common sense and sound policy.

In Bush’s world, the federal government is 100 percent for oil, pursuing oil policies, raising oil money, facilitating skyrocketing oil profits, fostering oil pollution, holding secret meetings with oil executives, fighting wars that in some measure, as Alan Greenspan said, are about oil.

In Gore’s world the Constitution is sacred, civil liberties are the core of Americanism, the Bill of Rights is the heart and soul of the nation, and torture is a crime.

In Bush’s world we should be afraid, unitary presidential power supercedes the Bill of Rights and the rest of the Constitution, torture is necessary so long as we call it something else, and the United States is now the only major nation opposing Kyoto.

An interesting sub-issue: General Electric has now embarked on a major policy that bears a close relationship to what Al Gore has been advocating for decades. In fact NBC and its cable properties have done outstanding work recently on climate change and global warming, from “The Today Show” traveling the world to CNBC profiling green businesses.

When I hear Tucker sneering and leering with contempt for Gore, it reminds me of JFK’s famous line during the Cuban Missile Crisis: “There is always somebody who does not get the word.”