Gore May Run, and Win Again

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Dardedar
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Gore May Run, and Win Again

Post by Dardedar »

Ozone Man
By David Remnick
The New Yorker

Monday 17 April 2006

The imminence of catastrophic global warming may be a subject far from the ever-drifting mind of President Bush - whose eschatological preoccupations privilege Armageddon over the Flood - but it is of growing concern to the rest of humanity. Climate change is even having its mass-entertainment moment. "Ice Age: The Meltdown" - featuring Ellie the computer-animated mammoth and the bottomless voice of Queen Latifah - has taken in more than a hundred million dollars at the box office in two weeks. On the same theme, but with distinctly less animation, "An Inconvenient Truth," starring Al Gore (playing the role of Al Gore, itinerant lecturer), is coming to a theatre near you around Memorial Day. Log on to Fandango. Reserve some seats. Bring the family. It shouldn't be missed. No kidding.

"An Inconvenient Truth" is not likely to displace the boffo numbers of "Ice Age" in Variety's weekly grosses. It is, to be perfectly honest (and there is no way of getting around this), a documentary film about a possibly retired politician giving a slide show about the dangers of melting ice sheets and rising sea levels. It has a few lapses of mise en scène. Sometimes we see Gore gravely talking on his cell phone - or gravely staring out an airplane window, or gravely tapping away on his laptop in a lonely hotel room - for a little longer than is absolutely necessary. And yet, as a means of education, "An Inconvenient Truth" is a brilliantly lucid, often riveting attempt to warn Americans off our hellbent path to global suicide. "An Inconvenient Truth" is not the most entertaining film of the year. But it might be the most important.

The catch, of course, is that the audience-of-one that most urgently needs to see the film and take it to heart - namely, the man who beat Gore in the courts six years ago - does not much believe in science or, for that matter, in any information that disturbs his prejudices, his fantasies, or his sleep. Inconvenient truths are precisely what this White House is structured to avoid and deny.

In the 1992 campaign against Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush mocked Gore as "ozone man" and claimed, "This guy is so far out in the environmental extreme we'll be up to our necks in owls and outta work for every American." In the 2000 campaign, George W. Bush cracked that Gore "likes electric cars. He just doesn't like making electricity." The younger Bush, a classic schoolyard bully with a contempt for intellect, demanded that Gore "explain what he meant by some of the things" in his 1992 book, "Earth in the Balance" - and then unashamedly admitted that he had never read it. A book that the President did eventually read and endorse is a pulp science-fiction novel: "State of Fear," by Michael Crichton. Bush was so excited by the story, which pictures global warming as a hoax perpetrated by power-mad environmentalists, that he invited the author to the Oval Office. In "Rebel-in-Chief: Inside the Bold and Controversial Presidency of George W. Bush," Fred Barnes, the Fox News commentator, reveals that the President and Crichton "talked for an hour and were in near-total agreement." The visit, Barnes adds, "was not made public for fear of outraging environmentalists all the more."

As President, Bush has made fantasy a guide to policy. He has scorned the Kyoto agreement on global warming (a pact that Gore helped broker as Vice-President); he has neutered the Environmental Protection Agency; he has failed to act decisively on America's fuel-efficiency standards even as the European Union, Japan, and China have tightened theirs. He has filled his Administration with people like Philip A. Cooney, who, in 2001, left the American Petroleum Institute, the umbrella lobby for the oil industry, to become chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, where he repeatedly edited government documents so as to question the link between fuel emissions and climate change. In 2005, when Cooney left the White House (this time for a job with ExxonMobil), Dana Perino, a White House spokesperson, told the Times, "Phil Cooney did a great job." A heckuva job, one might say.

Last week, Gore dropped by a Broadway screening room to introduce a preview of "An Inconvenient Truth." Dressed in casual but non-earth-tone clothes, he gave a brief, friendly greeting. If you are inclined to think that the unjustly awarded election of 2000 led to one of the worst Presidencies of this or any other era, it is not easy to look at Al Gore. He is the living reminder of all that might not have happened in the past six years (and of what might still happen in the coming two). Contrary to Ralph Nader's credo that there was no real difference between the major parties, it is close to inconceivable that the country and the world would not be in far better shape had Gore been allowed to assume the office that a plurality of voters wished him to have. One can imagine him as an intelligent and decent President, capable of making serious decisions and explaining them in the language of a confident adult. Imagining that alternative history is hard to bear, which is why Gore always has the courtesy, in his many speeches, and at the start of "An Inconvenient Truth," to deflect that discomfort with a joke: "Hello, I'm Al Gore and I used to be the next President of the United States."

...snip...

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/041806EA.shtml
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Barbara Fitzpatrick
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Post by Barbara Fitzpatrick »

Contrary to Faux News in 2000, Gore did not lust for power. He saw the presidency as a duty he was supposed to carry on, and a "bully pulpit" for getting energy/environment/economic work that needed to be done, done right. He also was integral in the terrorism report work done under Clinton, so it is extremely unlikely 9/11 would have happened under Gore - and it most certainly wouldn't have had the same outcome.

I doubt that he will run again. If he does, I'll be working on his campaign.
Barbara Fitzpatrick
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Betsy
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Post by Betsy »

Interesting article. If I'd been paying more attention to these things earlier, I'd have been more prepared for the kind of mentality I encountered while participating with nwapolitics.com blog - you know, things like criticizing things without even reading/watching them; and name calling instead of discussing the issues. I mean, really, I had been kind of sheltered I guess because I thought I was going there to have healthy political debates/discussions; I'd never encountered such idiocy before. Now I see they're just emulating their president.

BTW, notice that when Asa! was raising a pot-load of money, they were trumpeting that; but an article a couple of days ago in the paper said that Beebe has now raised the most money --- not a word about that on NWAP.... they also don't like to face reality.
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Dardedar
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Post by Dardedar »

Barbara Fitzpatrick wrote: ...it is extremely unlikely 9/11 would have happened under Gore - and it most certainly wouldn't have had the same outcome.
DAR
I totally agree. In fact, I am going to put up a post (recycled from something I put on NWA months ago) on how badly Bush & Co. bungled things in the lead up to 9/11.
BARB
I doubt that he will run again. If he does, I'll be working on his campaign.
DAR
I think he will. And I think he would have a good shot. Hillary has so much negative baggage, and I don't buy her pseudo moves to the right. I look forward to this movie.

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Barbara Fitzpatrick
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Post by Barbara Fitzpatrick »

I would love to see a Gore-Edwards ticket (hey - 2 Southern boys won with Clinton-Gore, and Cheney had to change his legal residence from TX so W could run as a Texan instead of another Andover-Yale, MA-ME candidate, like Kerry). I liked Kerry. I read his book and he's a good man with good plans. However, New England seldom produces a manner and sense of humor that is acceptable to the South and Midwest. I want Kerry (and Hillary, for that matter) right where they are - in the US Senate.

Hillary is not now and never has been a liberal. She was a Goldwater girl, for pete's sake, with what Molly Ivins calls "that earnest Methodist upbringing", from the Midwest. Because she was married to a populist (who tried to USE the existing system, rather than blow it up and start over - which is why Bill has been called the best republican president we've ever had) the MSM has been billing her as a liberal. The only thing liberal about her is her honest accessment of children's needs (and dangers), and her refusal to accept fundie rhetoric about the inherent virtues of parents. On HEW she is as sound as any progressive could wish. It takes getting her attention first, and then presentation of hard facts with full-color charts and graphs, to bring her into the progressive camp on anything else. (Tree-huggers need not apply, but the Apollo Alliance should knock on her door, with a full laptop).
Barbara Fitzpatrick
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