BOB HERBERT: The Passion of Al Gore

Al Gore is earnestly talking about the long-term implications of the energy and climate crises, and how the Arctic ice cap is receding much faster than computer models had predicted, and how difficult and delicate a task it will be to try and set things straight in Iraq.

You look at him and you can’t help thinking how bizarre it is that this particular political figure, perhaps the most qualified person in the country to be president, is sitting in a wing chair in a hotel room in Manhattan rather than in the White House.

He’s pushing his book “The Assault on Reason.” I find myself speculating on what might have been if the man who got the most votes in 2000 had actually become president. It’s like imagining an alternate universe.

The war in Iraq would never have occurred. Support and respect for the U.S. around the globe would not have plummeted to levels that are both embarrassing and dangerous. The surpluses of the Clinton years would not have been squandered like casino chips in the hands of a compulsive gambler on a monumental losing streak......

http://freedemocracy.blogspot.com/2007/06/bob-herbert-passion-of-al-gore.html

would enjoy being president when he would have to deal with many different things and the environment would only be one of them? I would only want to see Gore as a candidate if his heart was really in the entire job and not just simply because he could win. I still wonder if there are people who feel guilty now because they did not do more to get him elected in 2000 when he ran against a man who had been a weak governor of Texas with such piddly qualifications to be president.

People's is crazy-ticked-off. Guilt ain't gots nuttin' ta do wit it.

An by da way, Gore got plenty elected in two'tousand.

Sure Gore was elected, but possession is 9/10ths of the law and there Bush has sat.
Gore is a man of the law and the Constitution and so he accepted the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision. Now we know the rest of the story.

Sorry for not being clearer.

and not politics. He would undoubtedly be a good president, but I do not know how much joy he would find in it.

Unless they're really into the ego-strokes, and want to become wealthier off of it.

And that is not the Gore we know. Not by a long shot.

But just as you would not want to see anybody in law enforcement because they love power, a president would be even worse. Maybe that is a point, that the best president would be one who does not covet the job, but could that person ever be nominated much less elected?

by the way, is quite on target when he says that in The Assault of Reason Gore "takes a blowtorch" to the Bushistas. When asked about the presidency Gore intimates not that he doesn't want the job, but that he is not into running. He says politics now takes a "level of tolerance for triviality and artifice and nonsence that I have in short supply." I love that man! He is just what the country needs; he has grown by his loss into one of the great men in the history of the USA, whether or not he is ever president. He has the gravitas which is monumentally missing inside the beltway; what enormously ridiculous thing will Bush do this trip to mortify the citizens of our currently pathetic country.