More Gore

Please indulge me as I write yet again about Mr. Al Gore (I've gotten some ribbing from my friends), but "An Inconvenient Truth" has wrapped up its inaugural weekend with an impressive box office take. The film made over $406,000 so far, playing on just four screens in the country. Not bad at all. If it means more people will think about the issue, then that's the real success.

The official website has ways individual people can take action.

Meanwhile, more amusing anti-global warming nonsense from Fox News.

Finally, despite his assurances that he has no plan to run, more people are calling for a Gore candidacy in 2008. I saw Gore speak on the issue last week and I believe that he is sincere in his statements that he has no desire to run again. His distaste for the style-over-substance sound-bite political culture has been evident in many of his recent interviews. Still, if the calls for Gore's return continue, here's what I envision happening... It should be (I hope) becoming increasing clear to Democratic leaders that a Hillary Clinton ticket in 2008 will crash and burn at the ballot box. Conservatives want her to run so they can engage in more Clinton-bashing and liberals are disgusted by the soullessness of her positions. Therefore, as '08 approaches, the party may approach Gore and draft him as their candidate. He would ask for many assurances before he accepted- the party leaves him alone to guide his campaign as he sees fit, etc- but this would be the party's best move. Ask Gore to run, let Gore be Gore, and do not try to force on Gore any of the campaign consultants who've been losing elections professionally for decades. That scenario, I believe, would guarantee victory in 2008.

Here's a sampling of writing on this subject-

Andrew Sullivan-

I know of very few Democrats enthusiastic about Hillary. The left-liberal base is enraged by her calculated centrism; the Republican party at this point could unite only if she ran against it; and questions about the Clinton marriage appeared on the front page of The New York Times last week as a virtual editorial begging her not to run.

Gore, moreover, has been proved right about a subject he’s been boring on about for decades. The past few years have revealed an accumulation of new data that have persuaded even sceptics like me that global warming is real, man-made and potentially hazardous. In politics, timing is everything, and, finally, Gore has it.

On national security, Gore also manages to assuage the American centre. He has a long track record of hawkishness, especially with respect to the Middle East. He knows defence policy well, and was a strong supporter of the use of military force within the conservative wing of the Democratic party for years...

...Then there’s the issue of karma. Gore won the popular vote in 2000. If a few old Jewish ladies in Palm Beach had not been confused by their ballots and voted for Patrick Buchanan, Gore would have won Florida as well — and the presidency. Everyone knows this — and that election still wounds America in ways that a Gore candidacy might assuage.

Gore’s penchant for detail, for policy wonkery, has also, in the wake of Bush, come to seem less of an irritant and more of an asset. After watching the incompetence in Iraq and after Katrina, Americans are beginning to want a president who is interested in how government works. Bush never has been. That was his charm. It has also proved his undoing....

Jonathan Chait-

...Clinton's problem is that everything she does to staunch her perceived ideology problem compounds her perceived character problem. What she says about the issues may be popular, but what the issues say about her is that she's a shameless self-reinventor.

Gore is winning plaudits because he's in the opposite position. A couple of years ago he appeared to be veering too far left when he denounced the Iraq war and the administration's disregard for civil liberties. But now, almost no one can argue with those positions — certainly not any prospective Democratic voter. And his focus on global warming, which may not rank high on the list of voter concerns in Ohio, points to his genuine conviction on the issue. Gore cared about the environment before it was cool (or, as it were, warm.) The issue helps him more as a character issue than a substance one.

Gore has expressed a reluctance to run, explaining that he lacks much talent or affinity for backslapping and political sound bites. I find his self-awareness admirable. Clinton seems to have even less natural political talent than Gore. Unfortunately, she's less aware of her limitations.

Frank Rich (surprisingly the least enthusiastic of the bunch, but still supportive of that general direction)-

[Sen. Clinton's] most excited constituency seems to be the right-wing pundits who still hope to make a killing with books excoriating her...

... [Al Gore, as an] anti-Hussein hawk who was among the rare Senate Democrats to vote for the first gulf war, Mr. Gore forecast the disasters lying in wait for the second when he spoke out at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on Sept. 23, 2002. He saw that the administration was jumping 'from one unfinished task to another' and risked letting Afghanistan destabilize and Osama bin Laden flee. ...

[Democratic leaders in Congress] blew off Mr. Gore for fear that talk of Iraq might distract the electorate from all those compelling domestic issues that would guarantee victory in the midterms. (That brilliant strategy cost Democrats the Senate.) On CNN, a representative from The New Republic, a frequent Gore cheerleader, reported that 'the vast majority of the staff' condemned his speech as 'the bitter rantings of a guy who is being politically motivated and disingenuous in his arguments.'

But in truth, as with global warming, Mr. Gore's stands on Iraq (both in 1991 and 2002) were manifestations of leadership -- the single attribute most missing from the current Democrats with presidential ambitions....

Seems like they all have a similar take on the situation, if varying in their enthusiasm for Gore the Candidate.

[Related- Lights, Camera, Al Gore! (Time magazine) ]