" . . . I can tell you he's making no moves and no sounds to indicate to me that he's going to run."
- Gore adviser Carter Eskew
I'm going to tell you a story about a girl I knew from my old high school. I'll call her "Amy" here so as to protect her privacy, but anyone who went to my school last year will know who I'm talking about. Anyway, Amy ran for student council president in June, and it was widely expected that it would be an easy victory for her and her running mate. After all, she had been the Social Awareness Chair on last year's council, ran the Social Justice Committee and the HIV/AIDS in Africa Committee, and was reasonably well-known throughout our city as a speaker for human rights. It was due in no small part to her that our school had earned the same reputation. Many believed that she had already won.
But as is typical of high-school elections, Amy and her partner were defeated in the election by the candidates who had a cooler campaign video.
Losing an election is never fun, but I was personally relieved that Amy didn't get a chance to be president. You might say, "Rio, have you lost your fucking mind?" The answer is that I have not. If Amy became president, she would not have nearly as much time to focus on her work with the Social Justice Committee. And as far as I have ever been able to tell, no one else in our school would do it half as well as her.
Al Gore is suffering — or benefitting, as the case may be — from an Amy complex. For him to transfer any amount of the time, money, and energy he has already invested in the battle against global warming would be a disservice to the millions of American citizens who look to him as an avatar for environmentalism. The other candidates, not having had as much of a focus on any one issue, have more of an opportunity to worry about travel, speeches, debates, scandals, fundraising, and a constant barrage of criticism (read: whining) from Fox News. They have yet to set themselves up as avatars for anything.
But Al Gore has already made it clear that he has bigger fish to save. As president, he may have a better chance of getting more done for the environmental cause, but he'd also have a war to fix, a border to secure, an economy to stabilize, and a national identity to rebuild. Therefore, it is the opinion of this writer that he and Amy should stick to doing what they originally set out to do and save the rest of our problems for someone else. They're both on a mission — now is not the time to cut and run.
While we're talking about Al Gore, you know that no one would attempt to refute the science he presents if he wasn't a well-known Democrat. But that's another rant.