Andrew Sullivan refers to Al Gore’s “deranged rant” with a link to a Slate article on said speech. Listed below are all of the quoted parts of Gore’s address:

You know, there was a mood in ’76, a spirit of unity, a feeling of determination that we were going to win that race that year … President George W. Bush reminds me more of former President Richard Nixon than any of his other predecessors … They tried to make out like my dad was an atheist because he didn’t want a constitutional amendment putting the government in charge of telling children how they ought to worship God in the public schools. … They came out with accusations that he was unpatriotic because he was opposed to the Vietnam War and the mistaken policy that got us into that war. He [Gore’s father] took the old Confederate slogan about ‘The South shall rise again,’ and he stood it on its head. And he proudly proclaimed, ‘The truth shall rise again!’

We have seen an administration which in my view more closely resembles the Nixon-Agnew administration than any other previous administration. … There’s a reason I say that. I don’t offer that as simply a casual slur. … I’m not above a casual slur … But I’m biased, I didn’t vote for the guy.

But here’s the reason I say that President George W. Bush reminds me more of former President Richard Nixon than any of his other predecessors. Nixon was no more committed to principle than the man in the moon. He, as a conservative Republican, imposed wage and price controls. Hard to believe in this day and time. But he did. And he cared as little about what it meant to be really conservative as George W. Bush has cared in imposing $550 billion budget deficits and trillions in additions to the national debt. That has nothing to do with conservatism and everything to do with his effort to get re-elected!

[On the post-September 11 politics] I think there were millions just like me, who genuinely, in spite of whatever partisanship they may have felt prior to that time, genuinely felt like they wanted George W. Bush to lead all of us in America wisely and well…

And the reason I’m recalling those feelings now is because those are the feelings that were betrayed by this president! He betrayed this country! He played on our fears! He took America, he took America on an ill-conceived foreign adventure dangerous to our troops, an adventure that was preordained and planned before 9/11 ever took place! … And so I say to you in closing my friends, in the year of 2004, the truth shall rise again.

Maybe we’re too daft. Maybe being non-native English speakers prevents us from seeing the truly deranged nature of this rant (we speak French you know!,) but what the fuck is Sullivan’s problem here? (Besides the obvious, non-Gore related issues.) The only deranged part of the article is Chris King of Irony Suellentrop’s “analysis,” a kind of poor man’s Dr. Krauthammer reading of Gore’s mind and soul.