Al Sharpton Out

and Now He Wants to be President

Gibbs
8/20/01
According to Reuters news, the Rev. Al Sharpton said  Sunday he will form an exploratory committee for a possible bid for the presidency in 2004, because of Black disenfranchisement in last year's Presidential election.

Al Sharpton is free after 90 days in jail for protesting against U.S. Navy bombing in Puerto Rico. While in jail, he went on a hunger strike, and immediately after being released, he went to the talk shows and the press, announcing that he will form a committee to run for president, or consider the possibility of running. Of course, he is doing this to help Black people become enfranchised again. 

Mr. Sharpton can run if he likes, but he will be crucified when the media gets into the Tawana Brawley case that he and two other defendants were ordered to pay some $345,000 because they were overly zealous in charging the police and the DA in the bogus Brawley case. Already the media is gearing up for him.

Sharpton and everyone else knows that he cannot win or come anywhere near winning; he cannot begin to approach a Nader or a Jesse Jackson factor. But, of course, his reason for considering a run has nothing to do with winning, raising issues, or, as he states, Black disenfranchisement. Gibbs has discussed his possible reasons for running elsewhere.

If Mr. Sharpton wants to run, this is a free country, let the man run. He should not, however, wrap himself so tightly in the enfranchisement of the Black community rationale. It is as indigestible from him as Thomas Sowell's reasoning on Reparations.