2008 Gore Announcement Inevitable… Or Not
posted by on October 12 at 8:43 AM
Now that Gore has won an Emmy and an Academy Award and a Nobel, how can he not run? TIME magazine predicts he will not.
Personally, I predict he will not run. The risk is too high. If he runs and loses, he will forfeit all of the prestige and credibility he has spent so much effort building over the last few years. He seems sincerely focused on the issues of global climate change. He has found his bully pulpit. Why risk losing that just for another bully pulpit—one with more shackles?
He could, in theory, use all his current prestige to launch himself past Hillary, Obama, and Edwards, and hopefully all the way to the White House. But running for president is a huge distraction and a full-time job. And if he gets Swiftboated and runs a shitty campaign (à la 2000), and loses, his environmental movement will lose all headway. Both he, personally, and the climate change movement he has spearheaded will spend the next several years floundering in the wind, right when they should be at the apex of their movement. Their momentum will be lost. Even spending the next year campaigning, win or lose, would be a huge distraction, sapping his time and attention, and stalling his movement.
Right now, the 2008 election solidly favors any of the leading Democratic candidates over any of the Republicans. So there is no need for Gore to ride in to “rescue” the Democrats (assuming he could). If Obama or Hillary or Edwards wins, Gore will be one of the most powerful non-political leaders in the world. He could demand and get any position he wanted from them. Like head of the Environmental Protection Agency, or Ambassador to the UN. With any of these roles, he’d have even more power to affect the world’s efforts to curb global warming. He could all but dictate the environmental policies of any of the democratic contenders, without having to actually run for president himself.
If he is serious about his current role, a world leader in the environmental movement, he will not run for president. He can use all of his awards and prestige and credibility to forward his environmental movement, or he can use it to run for president, but he cannot do both.
Can we start attaching some pictures to some of these posts?
I predict I will not care what Gore decides to do.
I need to lose weight.
What? You don't know what Gore looks like? Do a Google search. There's a million pics of the guy.
We have to find the BearManPig! I'm super cereal!
Gore has more to lose by running (and even winning) than he does by staying out of the fray. The next president is going to be saddled with outrageous debt and the quagmire of Iraq, so even though getting the US unaddicted to oil is somewhat related to his current award-winning efforts, said efforts would be balanced with attending to the crises of the wars, the economy, health care, etc.
If he truly cares about continuing to raise awareness about Global Climate Change and wants to make a difference, he'll stay out of the way and work with the next administration on his specific focus and do more good more successfully.
Yeah, he should not run, you know if he was the President there would be nothing he could do, you know the Presidency being all powerless and such..... As a private citizen he can raise awareness but can not propose or implement policy...
But Mr Poe is right, who cares? We are just heading to death. And I for one will enjoy the revenge of Mother Nature killing off humanity. It will make for GREAT television!!!
Very good points indeed. It is quite insightful of you to consider what Gore would lose beyond the Presidency if he failed in another campaign.
It's a valid request to want pictures with the post, although I can also see good reasons why it would not be necessary in this case. And it's good to be reminded of the importance of Mr. Gore's weight in guessing whether he will run.
@3
Of course I know what he looks like. But we're 5 posts in and everything is text. Zzzzzzz.
“He could demand and get any position he wanted from them.”
Yeah. Right. The Clintons are so accustomed to kowtowing to Gore’s demands…
its precisely because the DOES NOT WANT to be president that he's the perfect man for the job. anyone who thinks he'd lose (to who? guiliani?) has no idea of the pent up support for his candidacy that exists in Murka.
i'd take gore over a combined force of a hundred super hillarys.
Gore looks like some sort of flesh golem. That's all you need to know.
And fuck Tipper Gore anyway.
Zzzzzzzzzzzz. Yes, we know what Al Gore looks like. And we're also familiar with your analysis, which sounds like everything everybody's been saying forever.
I agree with Poe. We're up to one pic in eight posts. If you want to borrow the gold suit, let me know, I can meet you.
Quick. Someone get Mr. Poe a coloring book and some crayons.
Fnarf, I could never wear a gold suit like you can. I don't have a cod piece big enough.
It's a Gore post! Where's Will in Seattle?
But I don't think he'll run. I don't think he's guaranteed of winning even the PRIMARY. I think he's happier now than he was in politics. And I think he's happier dealing with climate change 24-7.
It would be awesome if the next president appointed Gore to be head of the EPA. And if he grew a mullet, he'd be just like Captain Planet...
Gore will run to beat/stop Hillary. They hate each other.
The mantle of great political power suits him very well right now.
A re - aligned America, under President Gore, could usher in a new global enlightenment - Gore likes the big time stuff.
He is good on the lecture circuit, but as Prez - well, its a MUCH BIGGER stage.
PREDICTION - He will run, get the nomination, and be elected. Go Al.
Dan Savage and I have cks. waiting for your campaign. Big checks .... and millions much more from Seattle.
Will find you a good tailor and a better hair dresser than John or Hilly.
Get Obama for VP.
Poe - go find something to suck on. Dog dick? Or try something new.
looks like hillary. and she's going to inherit a trainwreck from this current rape-and-run admininstration, so i wouldn't want her job if i were gore, either. he's happier now. as chris crocker would say "just leave [im] alone!"
Gore finally found something he's good at, and everybody wants to ruin it for him by making him run for president. Leave the guy alone!
he isn't going to run. he's working on a global issue that will impact everyone, not just americans and whomever we decide to colonialize/fuck with. but i do think he will kick some ass at the democratic convention. and while the president will have to deal with all the crazies in the country and pandering to whatever mediocre solution, al gore will be the conscious of the country. and that will last longer than spending 8 years of cleaning up W's mess. it says a lot of democrats actually that even after their terms they are still relevant to the country/world (Clinton, Carter) while the R's seem to just shrivel up and go away (Reagan, Bush) or maybe I'm just living in a different world of relevancy.
Personally, I don't care much either way, given that I actually like some of the current Dem candidates.
But I'll leave this quote here as it's worth thinking about:
"Perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantel because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well."
-Dumbledore.
@16 - I was on the Washington Post, refuting global warming deniers.
Man, they're coming out of the woodwork today.
That said, it's a great day in Dodge. President Gore running for re-election, with a fine cast of VP candidates like Richardson, Obama, and Clinton to choose from.
Raphael @18:
Look away, Al. Look away. Don't do it! Raphael here is a mermaid, beckoning you to crash your vessel against the rocks.
oh @22:
I was thinking that very thing myself this morning reading a mention of Jimmy Carter's Nobel Prize in 2002. You could say Gore simply cut to the chase. He managed to become a Democratic ex-president and do all the good for the world that comes with that, without having had to go through the indignity of actually being president.
After SDA's excellently articulated post, we're still going on about Gore running?
On top of all the good points that he's happier/better/more effective as an environmental advocate, there's the issue everyone seems to be forgetting: Gore was a terrible candidate with spectacularly poor charisma.
Doesn't anyone remember the horrible feeling in the 2000 election of choosing between catastrophic merely awful (and then seeing catastrophic win anyway)? Gore should have stomped Dubya by 10-20 points. The election was very much his to lose, and lose it he did. (Yeah, yeah, I know, but avoiding such a razor-thin margin would have made the whole Florida/SCOTUS situation impossible.)
Gore doesn't want to go back, and if we were smart, we wouldn't want him to, either.
Charisma?
Have you read how the NYT, WaPo, and various TV News admitted later that they distorted his image because they wanted to have a beer with the frat boy?
Get real. Al's fine.
Al's fine now, because his beliefs and passions are well-aligned with his work and his public face. As Clinton's veep and even more so in 2000, he reeked of double-talk in the service of politically expediency. Much as with Kerry, we held our noses and voted for him because he wasn't Bush.
The D's have both a better field and a stronger position now, and Gore has found his niche. It'd be a sad day for both if the party thought it needed Gore to win.
Al deserves better than the presidency, and he's already gotten it. We missed our chance, now leave him in peace.
Gore is still not running for president.
Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Barack Obama, or any long-shot Democrat will almost certainly use him as an outside expert on climate issues, and that's exactly the role he should have.
Gore is a bad candidate and on most issues would be an unremarkable to poor (but not disastrous) president. He's a good person to be leading the American response to global climate change, and that's where he should stay.
CHARISMA?!?!? LOL Yeah man, because that's the first quality I look for in a President, and not you know...intelligence, wit, balls, etc.
Comments Closed
In order to combat spam, we are no longer accepting comments on this post (or any post more than 14 days old).