I have a small beef with a large Gore '08 button that Gore drafters are distributing here in New England. Its white letters on a purplish blue background read "Al Gore for President '08," with a thin light green stripe across the middle that outlines the words "The Will to Act."
The button is elegant, quite cool even, but sets the wrong tone, the wrong "frame" for the movement to draft Al Gore for President. [picture below the fold]
The typical reaction to this button...
is "Oh, is Al going to run?" It looks like a candidate's button, and the graphics are elegant and echo those on Al's website. If Al were running now, it would be fine.
But Al is not a candidate, and the Draft Gore campaign is not his campaign. If its purpose is to persuade Al to run, it is not even a campaign to convince him that lots of people like, admire, and support him. It's a campaign to convince Al that the American political landscape has changed for the better. Since we can't expect to fool him with noise machines and mirrors, the goal of the movement is therefore to transform the American political environment, because that's what it will take to get him to enter the race.
In his new book, The Assault on Reason, Gore says quite clearly that he is looking for something new.
It is my greatest hope that those who read this book will choose to become part of a new movement to rekindle the true spirit of America.
And, in an interview about the book with the Nashville Tennessean he said even more clearly what it would take to change his mind about running for office again.
I respect the political process with all its flaws, and I am under no illusions that the presidency is not the most important position with the most ability to influence the course of events, but I've run twice and I don't think that my aptitude for politics is necessarily matched to the kind of politics that the system calls for in this day and time. Maybe that will change. Maybe the transformation of this conversation of democracy with more influence for reason and less for image and spin will emerge.
In and interview with Time magazine, Gore was asked "What would it take, specifically?"
I can't say because I'm not looking for it. But I guess I would know it if I saw it. I haven't ruled it out.
It is understandable that Gore does not spell out more explicitly what it is. A recent diary by paradox explains that a great part of Gore's story
is the always unsaid perverse, sick, and berserk relationship the US journalism corps has with Al Gore.
It amazes me how the scope and searing hurt of the 2000 campaign journalism is always blithely ignored, when in fact it is totally the main impediment for Gore running again. Al always gets such ridiculous criticism for his 2000 performance, with never a word how impossible it is to even think of a narrative when one knows just the plain spoken truth can’t work, it will be called a lie. That really happened, repeatedly.
It was a classic Rovian tactic to flip a candidate’s strength (honesty) by outrageously claiming the opposite. George Bush was a drunk with a stinking, slimy record of awful lying while Gore was a square honest wonk, so what we got was a full year of Gore the Liar.
The US journalism corps has only regressed since then with hundreds of thousands of corpses stacked around their record and confirmed with their bizarre schizophrenic review of Gore’s latest book (Mona Charen, an old friend of mine, classically offered Republican intellect by openly stating she hadn’t read the book, but here’s the review!). This is by far the #1 reason Al might not run
To state the converse, what Al is looking for is enough popular support that the reportariat will not dare to screw him again for speaking the plain truth. (He clearly can't say this himself.)
However much faith Al has in the Internet as a vehicle of political change, it's clear by now that it will take more than blogging and on-line petitions to convince the very serious people who report the news that there is an important new force in American politics. It will take activity on the streets and genuine electoral uncertainty for the movement to be taken seriously. Concerted efforts to get Gore on primary ballots and positioned win delegates in the Democratic Nominating Convention, such as the California Gore Ballot Initiative and parallel grassroots drives in a growing number of other states can do this. The coming two months will be crucial for these efforts.
Which is why I've souped up my blue Gore '08 button...
until someone makes one with Uncle Sam...
What have you done to draft Al Gore for President today?