Here's the deal: Al Gore is still Al Gore. Most anyone who has seen "An Inconvenient Truth" can tell you, it's the same guy. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But the hype about the "new, improved Gore," the loosened-up dude, newly comfy in his skin, totally changed since his humbling non-defeat in the 2000 election... well, it's just hype. And it's misdirected.
In the film, Al Gore is the same earnest professor, literally lecturing us, from a stage, about global warming, replete with charts and graphs and that signature lilt in his voice. He may be beefier, he may be greyer, but he still name-drops and calls most every major global warming scientist "a friend." In short, he's still the same old Al Gore. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
In fact, there's very little wrong with the same old Al Gore. He's the guy that won the popular-- and probably electoral-- vote in 2000. He doesn't need to be re-invented. As the film shows, he is still a brilliant guy, giving the same ahead-of-it's-time lecture about global warming, with an eye towards saving the planet, instead of saving his 29% approval rating, like others we know. He shouldn't have to apologize for being who he he's always been: a reasonable, consistent, fundamentally decent intellectual with the greater good in mind. In fact, maybe it's us who's changed. After 6 years of watching our nation go from Hero to Zero, maybe we see Al a bit differently now.
The brilliance of "An Inconvenient Truth" is not its lame animation of Polar Bears looking for floating ice, but its documentation of a man who has basically never changed. Gore is the Energizer Bunny,shuffling around the world with his laptop of depressing truths, flying business class instead of Air Force One, in an effort to save us from ourselves.
It is the events swirling around him, not the man himself, that have changed. The footage of Gore in environmental committee hearings in the 80's proves that. It is our (or more specifically, the Supreme Court's) rejection of him that has turned him into a sacrificial figure. In fact, if there was ever a hard-to-avoid crucifixion metaphor, it's Gore being frisked by airport security. Priceless.
I have no idea if the guy is running again-- I look to HuffPo readers for that kind of skinny-- but I did kind of grow up around him and there have always been big expectations. I first saw him speak at the JFK Library in the 80's. All of 13, I turned to the adults I was with and said "that guy could be president." They laughed. I got the impression they thought he was too young, and that southern democrats weren't particularly fashionable at that moment.
I attended his high school, St. Albans, and knew his daughters at the sister school, NCS. I had lunch under his class picture in the refectory every day. Later, I would learn the likes of John Warner, Britt Hume, Josh Bolten, and Prescott Bush were hanging on the wall nearby, but during my era, Senator Gore was the local hero. There was still a slight whiff of optimism around politics then, pre-Bush Senior. And Gore seemed to be the guy that embodied it best.
In the 1990's, my sister worked in the West Wing when Gore was VP, and he continued to be well-liked. He was competent, yet stopped short of running the country into war from an undisclosed location. He didn't shoot anyone in the face. He didn't use profanity on the floor of the Senate, or cause his chief of staff to get indicted covering up national security leaks for him.
During that time. I had the opportunity to screen a film I had exec. produced for President Clinton at the White House. Afterwards, he took me and the other Hollywood types on a midnight stroll through the building, giving us an amazingly detailed history of, well, everything that had ever happened there. After an hour or two, as we were thinking "does this guy ever sleep" and "they are going to have to forcibly remove him on inauguration day because no one has ever loved the White House this much," Clinton stopped. We were in the Oval Office, and he leaned back against his desk, arms folded across his sweater, and threw out his bit of prophecy: "This guy Bush thinks he should be president cuz his daddy was. And It's wrong. It should be Al." It was unforgettable, not just because of its bluntness, but because at the time, no one was taking W that seriously. But I guess no one knew better than Clinton how quickly things could turn, and how dirty it could get behind the scenes.
Al made mistakes. Al shouldn't have shunned Clinton. Al shouldn't have relied so heavily on advisers. Al should have won by a landslide. All true. But the vibe continues to be that the guy isn't finished yet. I, for one, hope he's not. But to those who support him, I would suggest it is not to his advantage to position him as the "new, improved Gore." People are always disappointed by false advertising. If "An Inconvenient Truth" is any indication, he is pretty much the same Al Gore he's always been. And maybe that's not such a bad thing.