Al Gore Jumps The Shark

This is from Al Gore's speech at the Dems' convention:

Before he entered the White House, Abraham Lincoln's experience in elective office consisted of eight years in his state legislature in Springfield, Illinois, and one term in Congress, during which he showed courage and wisdom to oppose the invasion of another country in a war that was popular when it started but later condemned by history.

1) He's talking about the Mexican War, which, it's true, the Whigs generally opposed, but the Democrats favored. I wasn't aware there'd been a shift. Because of that war, we now have Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada and (ahem) California. Al Gore is unhappy about this?

2) History hasn't had a chance to pass judgment on the Iraq War. In fact, the war isn't even over yet officially. So Gore's speech isn't just bad thinking, it's bad parallel struture

3) This kind of speech, where someone makes a strained historical analogy to praise his candidate, makes me cringe. It'd be just as easy (and just as silly) to compare Barack to Nixon or even Stalin.

Whenever I see this kind of thing I can't help but think not of Dan Quayle being compared to JFK at the '88 convention (if Obama tries to compare himself to Lincoln in a debate, you know McCain will give the Bentsen response), but back a little further to Richie Cunningham's graduation speech on Happy Days, a show set in the 50s, but aired in the 70s, not long after Watergate. Richie says we've got through tough times before in our history, and what is one of his examples?--Andrew Johnson's impeachment! As we all know, political speeches of the 1950s were haunted by the specter of Andrew Johnson.

This is bad writing, but it was only a sitcom that had to churn out an episode a week. Someone somewhere should have caught Al Gore before he grated on our ears by pulling the Mexican War out of nowhere.