Volume 47, Number 16 · October 19, 2000
Gore in the Balance
By Lars-Erik Nelson
Inventing Al Gore
by Bill Turque
Houghton Mifflin, 448 pp., $25.00
The Prince of Tennessee: The Rise of Al Gore
by David Maraniss, by Ellen Nakashima
Simon and Schuster, 323 pp., $23.00
In Praise of Public Life
by Joseph I. Lieberman, with Michael D'Orso
Touchstone/Simon and Schuster, 174 pp., $12.00 (paper)
The Democratic National Convention got underway in Los Angeles in mid-August with security precautions worthy of Berlin's old Checkpoint Charlie. The fabled or, if you prefer, notorious Los Angeles Police Department clad itself in black helmets and body shields and stood in long ranks, each officer hefting a three-foot-long club. The security forces erected steel and concrete barricades and chopped down saplings around the Staples Center, in an already treeless and dreary area just south of downtown, lest their scrawny trunks be used for cover by a much-feared army of militant vegetarians, pacifists, opponents of the death penalty, and, most dangerous of all, nonbelievers in David Ricardo's argument that free trade ultimately benefits everyone. Anyone entering this bunkerlike setting had to wear a tag around the neck which was subject to inspection by ultraviolet rays lest it prove to be a counterfeit. All that was missing were the signs saying 'You are leaving the American sector.'
Review, 4553 words
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