So I haven't set foot in New Hampshire in 2 whole months. That might sound like a while but believe me, it can be easy at times when you realize that your most respected journalistic institution is the Union Leader. I opened it this morning to discover that Gore Won't Run. Not only that, but..
Al Gore is not going to run for President. He is going to endorse Hillary Clinton, instead.
My problem with these statements actually has very little to do with the UL. It's not about a difference of opinions between the Union Leader and I; that I really don't trust assertions like these when I read them in a Republican rag.
A perfect example of the disconnect between the Beltway crowd and real people can be found by looking at the media's treatment of Al Gore after his Nobel Prize win and the conclusions they've drawn versus what we can find out for ourselves.
I'm going to give a bit of preface here, as I've been absent from Blue Hampshire for some time..
I've had a wonderful vacation from politics in the past couple months. Taking off my state rep hat and putting back on my college student cap has been as enlightening an experience as the one I had - leaving school for Concord - last December.
Stepping out of the thick summer air in the midst of the NH primary gave me the opportunity to watch peacefully from the sidelines, from a much clearer perspective. Perhaps even greater was the peace of mind I enjoyed as a supporter of a candidate not caught in the political fray. Of course, I had to check in from time to time, for fear of missing any truly important headlines like "Global Warming finally disproven" or "Hillary Clinton nominated ahead of schedule," but even then, getting the news from Jon Stewart for half an hour at night isn't so bad.
All I really had to do was mark off October 12th on my calendar, sit back (ie: concentrate on school and have a social life), and wait.
Friday was the end of my first quarter at school and the beginning of fall break. Coincidentally, it's also the day the Nobel Peace Prize was announced. The prize was announced very early in the morning and, while I'd love to say I stayed up until 5 a.m. just to watch it, I just so happened to be doing what college kids do best: staying up until all hours of the night.
I knew Al Gore would win. I say it at the risk of sounding pompous, but please bear with me because this has a lot to do with the subject of my post. See, I didn't know it in the sense of "I'll bet you $100 that Al takes the prize." It was just a calm, assured feeling I had, deep down inside; it was fate.
On the surface, however, I was extremely uneasy about it and unsure of his chances from one minute to the next. The media left Al Gore alone for a while, as the horserace went full throttle, post-Labor Day. However, as the announcement drew near, he became of interest to the talking heads once again?
The meme created, before it was known that Al Gore would be receiving the Nobel prize, was that the committee could not pick him because it'd look like a political decision, or that if they did pick him, it would be meaningless because it'd be politicized.
Though my doubts were nurtured by the talking heads, it's now official - their words are meaningless.
Practically overnight on Thursday, reality was stood on its head. On Friday, the spin coming from the Beltway consultants, strategists and pundits was backwards, almost the complete opposite of what we were being told before?
The real truth is that the Nobel prize doesn't have any political ramifications - it transcends politics.
The prestige of winning the prize has made Al too pure to be a politician again.
He couldn't risk tarnishing his Nobel Laureate status by reentering electoral politics.
He's so successful doing what he is now. Why would he want to ruin it by running for President?
Okay, stop and think for a second how ridiculous that question is (Never mind the outright hypocrisy of these people, changing their message quicker than you can say 'Iraq').
Let's not kid ourselves here - there is absolutely no one more powerful than the President of the United States. Al Gore has expressed his distaste for campaigning but I distinctly remember him saying in the last few months that he'd "love to be President."
Forget the false premise that Gore only cares about Global Warming now (see here, here, and here). The insane assertion that "Al Gore can do more to solve the Climate Crisis from outside the White House than in" is followed up with even flimsier logic informing you of why he couldn't run for President, even if he wants the job.
According to some wise Democrats in D.C., everyone is perfectly happy with our field of candidates and "they don't need a white knight riding in." Really?? We don't need a white knight riding in right now? At what point did this stop being the most important election in history? I guess America has it going pretty good right now and just doesn't know what's good for 'em. I mean, if you don't count Congress's approval ratings or the fact that very few people have committed to a candidate (around 1 in 5 primary voters in NH), then sure you could say that Al Gore would just be wasting his breath.
The only thing that doesn't add up for me is that people appear to actually want to hear what Al has to say. The "experts" are all giving us a million and one different excuses that marginalize the excitement over Al Gore. If you look in the local papers, however, you'd think everyday Americans were living on another planet. And the further down you go to the grassroots level, the more optimism you find about Gore running for President. Think of how many people saw the Oscars, or the Emmy's, or Live Earth. The prospect of Al Gore running again has been implanted in their minds.
Perhaps the greatest most noticeable thing about the mainstream media's reaction to Gore's win was that they tried to devour the story in one 24-hour news cycle. It's not that it isn't "newsworthy" - the New York Times has been running pieces about him every day since the prize came out. The pundits and the spinsters, on the other hand, don't want this story to get legs. Tim Russert wasn't even subtle with his insistence that Gore isn't going to run.
The experts did what they're paid to do: speculate. Forget that their speculation can potentially have an impact on the actual outcome of real events. You can cite polling data endlessly, analyze all the "signs", or get anonymous quotes from former advisors, and it all means nothing.
I was asked the other day by a reporter what some of these signs were that I see, indicating Gore will run. I had a difficult time answering it and ended up giving a really horrible answer, but that wasn't the problem. The frame of the question was bogus.
You don't have to look for signs that Gore will run. You don't need satellites to track his movement or an expert opinion from someone who thinks they know the man. All you have to do is listen to what he's saying.
The beauty of what we're hearing right now in the media is that it's doublespeak. Everything he's said suggests that he'll run if he has to. What we're being feed right now are "signs" that he won't run, and there are more than a few people who are eager to give you some.
Want something you can take to the bank? Perhaps the most straightforward statement that Gore has made having to do with the 2008 elections: he promises that Global Warming will be the #1 issue.
Okay, now let's talk about prestige and Nobel-ility. How much integrity does this man have if he breaks such a promise he has reiterated multiple times in recent months, culminating in this moment of global visibility and acclaim? I dare say that he doesn't take this commitment lightly.
Policy differences should be central in Gore's decision to run, and these differences do exist:
On whether it matters for policy reasons, the case for Gore to run is much stronger. He has made global warming his defining issue, and the dirty secret of the Democratic race is that Christopher Dodd, as the lone supporter of a carbon tax, is the only candidate who really takes global warming seriously.
This brings me to today's column in the Union Leader, penned by another Washington insider, Roger Simon. He says Gore won't run. Someone please get this guy a seat at the roundtable on CNN, he sure must know what he's talking about if he's willing to put that next to his byline!
His reasoning for this is absolutely astounding:
Al Gore is not going to run for President. He is going to endorse Hillary Clinton, instead.
For anyone who fails to see the irony in this, further explanation below. Next?
First, Gore is very close to becoming something rare: a political figure who ends up transcending politics?
Not this again...
Second, Gore is enjoying himself and his new role.
CW, anyone?
Third, there has been a shift in attitude toward a Gore presidential run. In the spring of this year, there was a genuine Gore boomlet, as commentator after commentator speculated on how well Gore could do if he ran for President just one more time.
Now that Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize, you would think support for Gore would be burgeoning into a real groundswell. But it isn't.
He let the cat out of the bag this time. Gore had a boom back in the spring, because "commentator after commentator speculated on how well Gore could do." And now, he isn't popular anymore because the Washington media elite decided for us that we don't really want to hear about Al Gore. That is laugh-out-loud funny.
"Hillary has a better chance that anyone else in the country to be the next President," a former Gore staffer told me. "Gore and Hilary have a pre-existing relationship and if he wants to be the person to move the country forward on global warming issues, he would want to help her."
"We need a President who cares about global warming and will designate someone who has global appeal to be a roving ambassador on the environment," the former Gore staffer said. "Two people fit that bill: Hillary Clinton and Al Gore."
Remember what I said about policy differences? Remember Gore's promise? If anything, this is the one issue where Hillary Clinton and Al Gore agree the least.
This is Senator Clinton being asked about the Carbon Tax at the unveiling of her Energy Plan in Portsmouth this summer. If you look closely, you can see me getting up and walking out about during her response. I had been raising my hand to ask the same question, and was quite upset by her response:
It turned out not to be a new development, despite my antagonizing a reporter over what I thought was a developing rift between Clinton's policy position and Gore's.
She actually asked Gore the same thing back on March 21st when he testified in front of Barbara Boxer's committee. Gore's demeanor and his choice of words in answering her question exposed a serious disagreement between Al and Hillary over this issue. Senate-folk are usually very good at masking emotions but this video has a lot of innuendo in it, and it's not the nice kind:
So here's what you're left with:
- The pundits are saying Gore won't run because Hillary has the nomination locked up
- We know for a fact that Al has promised to make the Climate Crisis the #1 issue in the 2008 election.
- The two of them have a serious policy disagreement over how much needs to be done to stop global warming.
- Gore has just won the highest honor that can be bestowed upon a human being for his prescience and dedication on this issue.
These factors are far more informative to the chances of Gore running for President than anything you're going to hear from Tim Russert, Paul Begala, or Roger Simon.