WingColors

Most politicians are chickenshit when it comes to putting their necks on the line... for anything.

Chickens stick their necks out, get their heads cut off and still find the will to run around. We need a new party where the mascot is a chicken.

Did he have an alliance with Bill Clinton that forced him not to put his support behind Obama?

Maybe friendship? If Clinton won, he would have supported her. She didn't win, he let nature take its course, and he is solidly backing the winner. I give him props for not bending over backwards because of the [possible] friendship. The course of her success or failure was entirely her own.

Even more reason for him to pull the trigger earlier, friendship or not we talking about the future of our country.

I think it was more the pressure from people calling on him, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to end the primaries with their endorsements that kept him quiet.

Endorsing sooner would have raised the question of whether the nominee was chosen by the people, or by party bigwigs. And I suspect that Hillary would have cried foul and alleged that Gore only endorsed Obama because of the (rumored) bad blood between him and the Clintons.

Endorsing towards then end yes would've raised the question, but I don't see the same problem arising had he backed him in Feb or March. But since I'm not a politician or a pussy I don't know how he was thinking.

There are a couple of reasons Gore might have waited this long, though my guess is that he didn't want more division within the party. Everyone presumes that he would have endorsed Obama, but what if he had instead endorsed Clinton? How would that have played out, given what actually went down? And what if he would have backed Obama but Clinton had won, what then? As quite possibly the most popular Democrat of the past few years, his voice held a lot of sway, and going any direction would possibly have caused more trouble for the party in the race.

Never before have two more egotistical assholes been more deserving of each other.

Pretty sure they aren't getting married.

And of course ego has no place in politics (riiiiight).

Almost bares the question if you can be egotistical and not be an asshole or be an asshole without being egotistical?

You can definitely be an asshole without being egotistical.

As to the opposite... I don't know, how much of an ass am I?

I'll leave that for somebody else to answer.

I don't care if someone's egotistical if they can get the job done. If they're going to be running the country, I want them to be embarrassingly superior to me (to quote Stewart).

That being said, I haven't seen much of an ego on Obama. At least, it's certainly less than some of the other candidates.

Perhaps Gore waited so long to sway Clinton voters that would be voting McCain? 'Course, that's a hell of a thing to wait on; it only works if the person you're planning on endorsing wins.

Although, it was pretty clear from earlier on (months) that he'd win the nomination.

You have to have an ego to run in politics, but it can't let it get in the way of making the right decisions. Without an ego you would get stomped all over and be nothing more than a volunteer.

That's where the line between confidence and arrogance comes in. From what I've seen, he displays more of the former than the latter; in that sense, I don't think that he's egotistical.