If Al Gore runs for President this year, I expect I'll end up supporting him, even though I like Edwards, Obama, and Dodd, and even though I expect many disappointments from him on the way to what I expect would be his ultimate victory. (Some of this is inevitable; I simply don't think that he can take as a Presidential candidate -- or even himself holds -- all of the wonderful positions that people on DKos have projected on him. Pushed for details, for example, I doubt his Iraq position would end up being that much different from that of Edwards.) But I judge a candidate largely by intelligence, integrity, and ability to win, and he has those in droves.
And I don't think he's going to run. I'd be more than happy to be proved wrong, but I don't think he'll run. I think that the reasoning that he would squander too much of the stature he's gained over the past few years to run by sullying himself in electoral politics now probably does reflect his own thinking, whether or not it's correct.
So this diary is about a Plan B for Gore: let people know that he would accept a draft, next August, to become VP again, so long as he has a Cheney-like grip over the environmental and energy portfolios of the U.S. government.
This diary not associated with any candidate or campaign.
Let me stress again: this is not Plan A. Plan A is that he runs. This is Plan B.
Announcing that he'd accept a draft if he could be Super-Enviro-Veep ("SEV") doesn't mean that Gore would be chosen, of course. That would be up to the nominee. But a nominee who faced a groundswell of Democratic and popular opinion to draft Al Gore and put him in charge of energy and environmental policy would face a lot of pressure to go along with it. And it doesn't matter if he doesn't get along with Hillary, should she win; lots of Presidents and Vice Presidents don't get along (JFK-LBJ, Nixon-Agnew, Reagan-Bush 41) and they do just fine. And I would feel better with a seriously empowered Al Gore -- one to whom Hillary had ceded the right to appoint everyone in the Departments of Energy and Interior, and the corresponding positions within the State Department -- wathing Hillary in Cabinet meetings.
The problem with running for President is that it may be taken to betray self-serving ambition, and that's why I don't thing Gore wants to run. He thinks that running -- kissing babies, eating cheese steak, courting contributors, and all else that it entails -- would blunt his ability to change the world, and unless he wins (and maybe even then) there's a fair change that he's right. If that's so, then within the next few weeks he will have to announce that he won't run.
But when he makes that announcement, he can say this:
I will not run for the Presidency this year, and I never plan to do so in the future. My concern is with changing the course of our nation and showing global leadership on global warming. However, if the Democratic nominee wants to draft me to serve as Vice-President again, but this time ceding me apppointment and operational control over the Departments of Energy, Interior, and relevant areas of the Department of State, I would take such a position solely because it would be the best platform from which I could put my plans with respect to the environment into effect, and I could not turn down having the ability to make such a change. Whoever the next President is will have plenty besides global warming to keep them busy, and saving our planet will be and should be a full-time job.
If he does that, then his being on the ticket is not about self-serving ambition, it's about the ambition to serve and save the nation and the world. I think he gets to have his cake and eat it too -- both before and after he is chosen, as well as if he wins. And it has the added benefit of being true: this is a full-time enterprise, and we would be well-served with a Vice-President who had the same power in this area that Dick Cheney has had over Bush's ruinous foreign, energy, and internal surveillance policies.
If Gore does turn down the chance to run for President, he can still use the levers of government to save the world. He can be the anti-Cheney. I hope that he'll make this statement, if he decides not to run, and then will simply refer people to it during the months between now and the Democratic convention, while the movement gears up to force the nominee to accept his offer.