Yet another report of Al Gore’s comfortable withdrawal from the world of political madness -- or is it comfortable coyness? -- has surfaced.
“Mr. Gore was on the telephone [with the NYT’s Adam Nagourney] … to dismiss -- with a combination of weariness and wariness, but with something approaching finality -- speculation that his rising profile should be interpreted as the first stirrings of another bid for the White House.”
“‘Why should I run for office?’ Mr. Gore asked.”
Surely, Al, you jest. Why should you run?
Could it be that millions in your party are longing for some realistic alternative to the inevitably catastrophic frontrunner? Or that you could do more good as president than as filmmaker? Or that perhaps you should serve the term you already won?
Or that you’re the most forceful, honest and ethical voice speaking today in opposition to reactionary neo-Republicanism? Or that when the office calls, any personal preference to stay at home should take a back seat?
And shouldn’t you take your own advice, that which you so discerningly dispensed to Mr. Nagourney? To wit …
You “brimmed with disdain at the state of American politics and political journalism, urging [your] interviewer to quit a career of covering politics to turn to matters of real consequence….
“Politics, [you] said, has become a game of meaningless, mindless battles, conducted by unscrupulous methods and people, designed to transform even the most serious policy debates into sport.”
Al, isn’t one politician’s principled concentration on “matters of real consequence” the only way to counteract “unscrupulous” politicians self-embroiled in “meaningless, mindless” manipulations that cater to the lowest common electoral denominator?
“Political scribes,” you lectured to the NYT interviewer, “have to take off their cynical lenses through which they view every moral challenge as political spin.”
Again, aren’t your own words, Mr. Gore, reason enough to run? Forget the pure horserace mentality of political scribes for now. First, the gauntlet of “moral challenge” has to be thrown down. Without that focus, that repeated emphasis on what matters, the scribbling P.T. Barnums of the press corps will have nothing left to cover but the circus.
If you want change, Mr. Gore, you must get in the game.
You said it yourself.