General Discussion

for things that happen while they're in office, especially if they can point to an official act that supported it.

al gore did nothing remotely controversial or unusual in taking credit for making the internet what it became.

virtually everything we heard about it was a direct result of a smear campaign. 99.44% was about whether or not he actually engineered the damn thing, and 0.56%, probably even less, was about the *fact* that the internet owes al gore many huge debts of gratitude for everything he did for it.

reagan took credit for a booming economy, but he didn't sell a single product and personally hired zero new private sector employees (ok, maybe his campaign hired a few). no one ever twists claims like that around, oooh, reagan, how arrogant and laughable, he's claiming he personally sold trillions and hired millions out of his own pocket, what a liar.

because everyone knows that that's what politicians mean when they take credit for something, they're referring to their official acts and leadership and so on, never to the technical accomplishments more directly attributable to others.

only in al gore's case did they gin up a major scandal out of it.