The Right Stuff

In 1924 Franklin Delano Roosevelt sought out a miracle. He went to a backwoods resort in rural Georgia called Warm Springs to swim in its "miracle" waters so that he might walk again. Infantile Paralysis or Polio (as we call it today) had left him paralyzed from the waist down. At that time Polio had no treatment or cure. Roosevelt was a paraplegic. Any hope of a political career was gone.

And a miracle did occur. Just not the one he hoped for. Roosevelt for the first time in his privileged life saw poverty, racism, illiteracy and famine up close. The water did not cure his legs -- it cured his soul. And although he realized he would never walk again he discovered something more important -- that he could lead.

Roosevelt decided to buy Warm Springs and make the first polio rehabilitation center in the world. And then he decided to take on Polio by pushing for a cure. The March of Dimes was partly his brainchild. The dime was a poor man's dollar. Everyone could give a dime and everyone could be invested in a cure. But why I am talking about this? I am getting there...

Polio had taken Roosevelt out of the 1920 and 1924 Presidential elections where he would have surely lost -- as those were Republican years. Polio asked him to develop patience and a maturity he hadn't before possessed. Leaving Washington and the world of politics behind allowed him to expand his vision and learn to listen. When he ran for President in 1932 he was ready. He understood the Great Depression on an emotional level. He had already seen it up close in Georgia. He knew how to talk to the country in a direct and honest way. He was the right President at the right time. The New Deal could only have sprung from him. On its most basic level the New Deal put people to work and gave them hope. It didn't fix the economy. But it kept people going while the economy fixed itself. It was sort of like Roosevelt swimming in the waters at Warm Springs.

Which brings me to my point...

Al Gore has been cast out into the wilderness so to speak. His political career sidelined by an election that political scientists will be analyzing forever. His humiliation and pain have been channeled into his work on the enviornment. Global warming is his Polio. He has been out into the real world. He has had to lick his wounds and revalue his values. And that has visibly changed him. There has been an internal upheaval inside Mr. Gore that is tangible. And he seems the better for it.

And maybe we could be too.

Just maybe he will decide to run for President. With his depth of knowledge of the greatest threat to the future of mankind it seems like he could be the right President at the right time.

And that time is near.