NO MAS:

Gore's Hands of Stone (Washington Post, December 14, 2003)

Al Gore, to paraphrase Abba Eban, never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. There he was last week, throwing his considerable weight behind Howard Dean and giving the former Vermont governor a potentially decisive edge in the Democratic presidential competition.

But in doing so, he neglected to alert his former running mate, Joe Lieberman (Conn.), who loyally promised that he would not run if Gore did. And the manner in which he handled Lieberman also antagonized a great many of his former aides -- not a few of whom are distributed among the other presidential campaigns.

Many former Gore staffers and aides sent e-mails to Gore and left phone messages for him to express their dismay. The complaints, according to one member of the former Gore staffers' peanut gallery, ranged from "disappointed" to lamenting that he had "hurt his legacy and stature in the Democratic Party." And there was a biting voice mail from a 2000 campaign worker asking: "Haven't you done enough harm to the party already?"

One prominent Gore aide from the 2000 campaign said the Lieberman slight reminded him of a nickname aides secretly gave the candidate four years ago. Playing off of his Secret Service code name, Robert Stone, they dubbed him "Los Manos de Piedras," or "hands of stone" -- a reverse-Midas knack of touching potential political gold and somehow turning it to stone. "It is the unique skill of being able to engender the greatest amount of enmity from the largest number of people," the former aide said.