Al Gore 3.0
The man who won the presidency in 2000 is looser and more outspoken than ever. Is his global-warming movie a warm-up for a third run at the White House?
It is probably not fair to say that global warming excites Al Gore, but get him going on the subject and he becomes possessed by the spirit of a Holy Rolling preacher, swelling and quaking in his chair, hitting high notes, speaking in tongues. We are meeting in a cramped waiting room outside two TV studios in midtown Manhattan. Gore is spending the afternoon here, knocking off a dozen or so interviews with broadcast outlets across the country, one after the other, intimations of the apocalypse sandwiched between the local-anchor happy talk and car-dealership ads in markets like Houston and Kansas City.
Gore is in the middle of an exhaustive campaign to promote An Inconvenient Truth, a surprise hit that transposes to film a lecture about global warming that he has given more than a thousand times in the past six years. (An accompanying book of the same title is climbing the best-seller lists.) But while Gore's message may be grim -- in a nutshell, a warming climate threatens civilization, and if the human race wants to survive, we've got about ten years to start turning things around -- Gore himself seems funnier, warmer and more relaxed than he ever did during his political years. You used to think: I wouldn't mind taking a class from this guy. Nowadays, you wouldn't mind having a beer with him. His recent appearance on Saturday Night Live, when he addressed the nation as president and boasted that gas prices were so low that the government had to bail out the big oil companies, was the single funniest moment on the show all season.
Gore's renewed visibility has only fueled speculation that this is all part of a carefully orchestrated plan to launch his third bid for the presidency. Although Gore refuses to rule it out, he suggests that he's having too much fun, and is too engaged in his various business interests, to subject himself to the endless slog of political life.
It's not unreasonable to hope that Gore runs, but the dream of a Gore candidacy also underscores the pathetic core of today's Democratic Party: It has become so unusual to hear a mainstream Democratic politician speak from a sense of conviction that when one does, people practically start begging him to run.
posted by EAPrez @ 9:52 AM
3 Comments
3 Comments:
Your statement has a ring of truth to it.
At the same time, I don't expect him to run. Here's why:
Al Gore is a man of vision, quite bluntly put. His vision of an 'information superhighway' as he called it during the 1980's and 1990's that would allow all computers to access each other through a single trunk (and financed by a small phone tax that he used what little influence he had as the newly elected vice President to get implemented) grew and became the internet (which Republicans roundly excoriated him for during the 2000 election, but he actually is as much as anyone the father, if not the 'inventor,' of the internet.
Then, in 2000, he had a vision for America. He planned to use the surplus to 1) fund the creation of universal healthcare, probably working with the insurance companies, but nevertheless providing coverage to everyone, and 2) start paying down the deficit.
But in 2008, whoever gets elected won't be able to implement any kind of grand and glorious vision. They will instead be more of a garbageman, cleaning up after the bull has left the china shop. The biggest challenge they will face is how to extricate ourselves from Iraq. Also on the agenda: skyrocketing fuel prices, double digit increases in healthcare costs (with the prescription drug turkey lasting for at least another decade before any significant changes can be made), American trust and prestige at a historic low, bin Laden not caught, getting stronger and with us moving towards a second quagmire in Afghanistan because we didn't make it a priority and finish the job when we could have, the loss of millions of good jobs and their replacement with Wal-Mart jobs, a growing number of impoverished people, and frankly an inability to do much with the Federal government because of a staggering debt, courtesy of the Bush tax cuts (which will still be in effect.)
Truth is, for a man with Gore's sense of vision, picking up the shattered pieces of what might have been as your own time runs out with you able to do nothing at all would be absolutely heartwrenching.
Far better that we elect a competent but myopic President who can focus closely on fixing one of these big problems at a time and never see the great vision of where we could be had the 2000 election turned out differently. I suspect that even if we elect good people, it will take a generation or two before we will even be in a position where a vision could be implemented. Or maybe by then, America will no longer be at the top of the pack, and we will be following a vision hatched in Europe or someplace else.
Al Gore is comfortable with what he is doing now, and he actually now has more moral authority than most ex-Presidents (except for maybe Jimmy Carter).
i don't expect gore to run because he has vehemently said that he was not going to. i don't want him to run because he is doing more good in this capacity. think about it- the dems are all on board with him and global warming and he is touting it as a moral issue and not a political one- thus drawing in a fair number of moderate repubs and indies. what better way to get people off board the repub express and unite the country? the neo cons don't believe in global warming and are now looking like a bunch of backwoods rednecks. i say go, al, go!
I was hopeful for a Gore run (to say the least) and although there's still a chance and we're a long way from the campaigns, it seems less a possibility with each passing day.
It's unfortunate because this country needs him as our president (had him in 2000 before the criminal element re-wrote history). I appreciate the postive angle on the words in this article, but if you were Al Gore, would you want the "center seat" after EIGHT HORRIBLE LONG YEARS of bu$hmeriKa?
Would you want to assume a destroyed infrastructure, a quagmire of murder and greed, disastrous international relations; I could go on- civil rights, education, environment, healthcare...who wants to tackle the mess that His Imperial Majesty will leave in his wake?
And the big thing- A STRONGLY POLARIZED POPULATION thanks to the "GREAT UNITER".
Of course, someone has to, and better a Democrat than a Republican, but as disappointing as the thought is, I don't think Mr. Gore will run again.
Like Eli said: It will take a garbage man.
Good find E!
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