Al Gore Direct

American Prospect is out with a penetrating article on Al Gore since 2000. It chronicles his apparently scattered but actually related activities after his election to the presidency was successfully stolen, some of them more successful than others. One of the less successful was teaching a journalism class that challenged conventional wisdom. The article quotes Josh Bearman, editor of the L.A. Weekly and a student in that class:

And along with that backlash, the old anti-intellectualism Gore experienced in 2000 made a reappearance. As Bearman tells it, “He knew more than everyone in the room. So the class basically turned against him because he was smarter than they were, and they didn’t like that. We witnessed exactly what had happened on the campaign plane in the year prior.” Gore did not return to teach the class in 2002.

Gore's message on media distortion was personal:

Gore’s own view,” says Hundt, “is that he sighed noisily in the debate and used the wrong telephone line to ask for money and the media said these are momentous events. Meanwhile, they ignore global warming and the failure to catch Osama and the destruction of the safety net.”

Few recent politicians have been as victimized by media as Gore. TV pundits and so-called news reporters as well as print columnists created an image of Gore as a liar, because (for example) he claimed to have invented the Internet, something he never said. As this article shows again, he was in fact instrumental in providing the early Internet with the resources to get started.

So Gore found ways to go directly to audiences, first by an arrangement with moveon.org that got his speeches directly to activists. Which would have been the kiss of death, if they hadn't been remarkable speeches---candid, incisive, relevant, smart, eloquent and important.

The article moves quickly through Gore's move to the center in the Clinton years but marks his endorsement of Howard Dean in 2004 as a declaration of independence. The article concludes:

Since his loss [in 2000], that old populist tradition has burst through the membranes of caution and ambition that once constrained it, and Gore has exploded back into the Democratic consciousness. In the late 1980s, his reputation as a New Democrat propelled him to the party’s vanguard; in 1992, it netted him the vice presidency. Today, his leadership as a New New Democrat, enabled by his disintermediated communication strategies, has begun restoring his reputation among liberals and allowed him to step forth from the wreckage of 2000 as a progressive statesman. The question, of course, is whether he could retain that standing in the chaos of a presidential campaign. The Internet may well have reinvented Gore, but for Gore, the issue may be whether it’s done the same to politics.

Gore for president in 2008 would be a dramatic story, and what the article doesn't mention is the residual desire of voters to right the wrong of 2000, which will only grow if he indeed becomes a candidate. I'm assuming it will take something very new but in an old tradition--what they call "drafting" a candidate. But as the article points out, with the Internet as it is today, anything can happen, and quite quickly.

Gore's next time in the spotlight will probably be in May: On May 26, Paramount Pictures will release “An Inconvenient Truth,” a made-for-theatres version of Gore’s digitized global-warming movie presentation. (Hundt says Gore views global warming as “the biggest challenge this species ever faced, the ultimate nightmare of technology, the ultimate nadir of pure capitalism unfettered.”) Deadening as it sounds -- Gore giving a slideshow on climate change -- the film received a standing ovation at Sundance and excellent reviews that seemed to leapfrog consideration of the work and trigger a larger reassessment of the man.