Al Gore in Newsweek
On Energy & Oil:
An Inconvenient Truth: Gore’s movie about global warming
A movie about Al Gore giving a PowerPoint presentation about global warming doesn’t sound all that exciting [in Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth.”]. Getting the country to face up to global warming is his life’s mission, and it could be his ticket to
the presidency. Voters yearning for a principled leader who truly believes in something may find what they’re looking for in the former vice president. Gore said that he’s in the middle of a campaign, but it’s not a campaign for a candidate. “Been there,
done that,“ he said. Nobody believes him. By not playing the overt political game, Gore may be putting in place the first issue-driven campaign of the 21st century, one that is premised on a big moral challenge that is becoming more real with soaring
gas prices and uncertain oil supplies.
Whether he is or isn’t running almost doesn’t matter. Gore has the luxury of waiting until late in the political season to announce. He has universal name recognition and a proven ability to raise money.
Source: 2008 speculation: Eleanor Clift, Newsweek, “Gore Redux”
Apr 28, 2006
On Energy & Oil:
Global warming captured Gore’s interest as student
This could be the ultimate remake for Gore, whose struggles with his persona during the 2000 campaign made him an object of ridicule. He seems more approachable now, and he’s a first-rate teacher as he explains in “An Inconvenient Truth” about the
inescapable march of global warming, along with its consequences, that first captured his imagination as a college student. The film is not apocalyptic; you don’t leave the theater feeling all is lost. Gore says he deliberately left out recent scientific
predictions that the world has just 10 years to reverse global warming or a tipping point will be reached beyond which it cannot be stopped. Reflections about the 2000 presidential race (“It was a hard blow, but you make the best of it”), a childhood
split between farm life and a hotel room in Washington and his beloved sister’s death from lung cancer interspersed with the slide show give the movie a biopic feel that makes viewers wonder what might have been if history had taken a different turn.
Source: 2008 speculation: Eleanor Clift, Newsweek, “Gore Redux”
Apr 28, 2006
On Principles & Values:
Parallels to Nixon’s comeback from 1960 vs. 1968
There is a parallel for Gore in another president who lost narrowly, retreated to private life and then returned to win the presidency. His name was Richard Nixon. He lost to John F. Kennedy in 1960 in what was then the closest race in American history.
Written off by the political establishment, Nixon went to New York and practiced law. Then in 1964, the Republicans took a drubbing with Barry Goldwater, and suddenly the uptight and sober Nixon looked pretty good. John Kerry came much closer to winning
than Goldwater, but Kerry turned out to be a wind-surfing dilettante who in retrospect reminded Democrats they had a better candidate in Gore. Gore is not anything like Nixon, but there is an underlying psychological subtext they have in common.
Once you’re bitten by the presidential bug, you stay bitten. This is his Richard Nixon remake. The question is-is he willing to challenge Hillary Clinton? That’s a question not even Gore seems to be able to answer.
Source: 2008 speculation: Eleanor Clift, Newsweek, “Gore Redux”
Apr 28, 2006
On Technology:
Cautious moratorium on Internet sales taxes
Gore supports the current moratorium on Internet sales taxes, but is wary of ceding a source of government revenue beyond that. Gore is waiting for the report by the [bipartisan commission which is studying what to do
about Internet sales taxes], due in April 2000, and in the meantime has proposed a “duty-free” zone to prevent foreign countries from taxing transactions on their companies’ Web sites.
Source: Newsweek, p. 31
Dec 20, 1999
Page last updated: Sep 29, 2024