Al Gore

Vanity fair is getting to be a really interesting magazine to read. Sometimes I wonder if all those books I read aren't anything but extended magazine articles. No, I didn't pick up that issue just because of Nicole Kidman's fantastic albeit 40 year old bodice. There was interesting stuff like reporting on how, in 2000, the media laid into Al Gore. It was amazing, there were plenty of people who were writing for liberal publications, and therefore supposed to be on the same side as Gore, laying into him and taking smallest remarks and making him look bad.

It's not at all clear what kind of president Al Gore would have been. Yes, he could probably win the Nobel prize this year but Jimmy Carter, a second rate president, also won the Nobel prize. They'd have called him a government nerd. He might have had to deal with Republican dominated congresses, I don't know if he was going to be able to handle all that.

What is clear, though is that history would have been quite different if Gore had won. There would not have been an Iraq. I don't know if Gore would have prevented 9/11, but he would have at least been more diligent about anti-terrorism. And there might not have been Afghanistan and Iraq. There might not be the amazing fiscal mismanagement that sees the US dollar in peril. The US government would not be as secretive and hostile as it is today. It used to be that the media would whack Clinton and Gore left right centre. At the beginning of the Bush administration they would be the ones whacking the media left right and centre, and it is only now, when evidence of Bush mismanaging emerges, that he's beginning to get some.

I don't know what Gore's response to 9/11 would have been. He might not have been astute enough as Bush is to ride the wave of popularity that these tragedies can give you. It's not only cynical thing to get political power: trying to attain power is like trying to earn money, it depends on how you get the power, and also what you use that power for.

That's the thing, if you're very fast to make war, like in the Bush administration, then people say that you're war mongering. If you're very slow to make war, like Clinton was in Bosnia, then people say that you're a coward and a weakling. You just can't win.

It's interesting how Gore's image is being rehabilitated. I don't think it would be so if he became president. They would continue whacking him, although they might relent a little if 9/11 did take place under him. He's done a lot to push the cause for environmentalism (now renamed "climate change" to make the threat more concrete, and less altruistic and hippy-ish). And former presidents can be very good ambassadors for causes. They are ideal as activists because everybody already knows them. It's not fair, of course, people on the ground would slog for their causes, put in the hours, wage war against riot police, work for shit pay in order to bring peace and justice to the world whereas these guys have it easy and collect Nobel Prizes. But Nobel Prizes are always political and the act of awarding it is always about bringing attention to big causes, so I say what the hell if that's the way the system works then that's the way it works.