Steve Malzberg
Monday, Dec. 16, 2002

When word leaked out late Sunday afternoon that Al Gore would not be a candidate for president in 2004, my reaction was "I knew it."

You see, I watched this bitter, frustrated, washed-up presidential wannabe's performance the night before, as host of NBC's "Saturday Night Live." It was, in a word, revolting.

I knew immediately while watching his act that he had already decided not to run. There could be no way for him to get away with doing what he did on screen that night and still have any chance of re-entering the race for the office of the most powerful position in the world.

You see, on "Saturday Night Live" Al Gore was gutless. On Sunday, his gutlessness continued.

No, it wasn't his two-minutes-plus kiss with his wife, Tipper, to open Saturday's show that convinced me that he was through pursuing his lifelong dream. That was simply a futile attempt to gain some cheap laughs by invoking the memory of a similarly inappropriate display of passion on the floor of the Democratic Convention in 2000, between the then-VP and his spouse.

It wasn't even what CNN's Jonathan Karl has called Gore's "parting shot" at the three men who competed for the No. 2 spot on the 2000 Democratic ticket, Senators Lieberman, Kerry and Edwards. In that scene, the SNL writers cleverly incorporated ABC's show "The Bachelor" into the script, with Gore "dating" and then choosing between the three. This included a hot tub encounter with the victorious Lieberman, complete with a champagne toast.

It was Gore's portrayal of embattled Sen. Trent Lott that convinced me there would be Gore no more. Coming just one day after Lott had to apologize for a third time for what some consider to be racially insensitive remarks he made at a 100th birthday party for Sen. Strom Thurmond, and just hours before some Republican senators would call for a new election for Lott's leadership post, Gore, using his crack SNL writing staff, managed to turn Lott into the Mother of all Bigots.

In the skit, Lott (Gore) was a guest on "Hardball," hosted by Chris Matthews (Darrell Hammond). Here are some of the remarks that came out of the former vice president's mouth:

"Chris, when I said our country wouldn't have all these problems if Senator Thurmond had been elected president, it had nothing to do with segregation. I simply meant that things would have been better if Thurmond were elected because he would have kept the white people and the black people separate."

"Chris, it has come to my attention that some of my comments about Strom Thurmond a minute ago might have been construed as racially insensitive. Let me apologize. I meant no disrespect to any white people. I myself am a white man and some if not all of my best friends are white. And let me make this clear ... as long as I'm in office, we will leave no white person behind."

By now, the Chris Matthews imitator has called Lott "Senator Grand Wizard" and "This goose stepper." He also says to Lott, "Senator, you're shedding a lot of light on the situation. Unfortunately, the light's coming from a cross you just set fire to."

Of course, the SNL audience and liberals all over America are loving it at this point, but there's more.

"Chris, too much emphasis has been placed on Senator Thurmond's segregation campaign. There was a lot more to his 1948 platform. He wanted to make it illegal for black people and white people to marry each other. He had great ideas for raising tax revenue, like making black people pay to vote. The man's a genius."

I wish I could say the same for Gore, but he is a coward. Gore chose this path to wander down so that it would be impossible for him to get back into the political scene.

How dare he participate in painting Lott as nothing better than a common racist. Did he think Lott and the rest of the Republicans would find that humorous? Did he seriously think that he could ever work as president, with Trent Lott, the majority leader of the Senate?

Of course not. So he took the gutless way out. Hit and run. That's what Gore did on Saturday night.

On Sunday, during his brief announcement on "60 Minutes," Gore again proved that he is gutless.

"Why are you not going to run?" he was asked. Here's what he answered: "I have the energy, drive and ambition to make another campaign."

So what's the problem? "A campaign would be a rematch between myself and President Bush and would inevitably invoke a focus on the past."

Translation: We would all be comparing the 2004 Gore with the one from 2000, who acted like a spoiled schoolboy and at times like a bully during his debates with Bush. Could you imagine the pressure he'd be under this time around? Not to mention the cloths, the alpha, the beta, the stiffness, the patronizing, and all the other ingredients that go into making Al Gore the unlikable robot that he is.

No, Al Gore couldn't take another go-round. He quit because he's a coward. He trashed Trent Lott because he's a coward. If he had any guts, he would have sat on SNL not as Lott, but as his own late father, Al Gore Sr.

He then would have told the Matthews character why he (his dad) was a segregationist, and what a great president he would have made had he been successful in his bid for the 1956 Democratic nomination. He would have explained why he voted against the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

Maybe Al Gore Jr. found it so easy to portray Sen. Lott as a racist because he learned from the best.

Steve Malzberg's WABC Radio shows can be heard live on the Internet at www.wabcradio.com: Monday-Friday, 6-8 p.m. Eastern time, with Richard Bey on "The Buzz" and Sunday mornings from 9-11 a.m.

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