Gore in the News - June 18, 2007

Today's quote . . .

All just power derives from the consent of the governed - John Locke

Today's talk . . .

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story...limate_crisis/1
Gore's fight against the climate crisis - Interview + audio
I'm going to do my best to provide leadership for this movement in whatever position I hold. I think there are a lot of good reasons not to run for president. But as you know, I haven't completely ruled out getting involved in the political system again at some point in time - there's no reason to do that. I hear myself repeating the same phrases, so forgive me if you hear that too. I really am focusing on this larger - make that different - kind of campaign. I won't say larger, because I know there's no position that can even approach the position of president in terms of the ability to influence events. But the way our political system operates in the United States today, the politics of reason faces a head wind. The skills that are rewarded in this communications environment include a lot of skills I don't think I possess in abundance. Some people catch on earlier than others that they're not well suited to the career they've chosen [laughs]. I'm fighting through the denial right now.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/st...2105343,00.html
It has got to be Al Gore
If he is as serious about climate change as he says he is, he has to run for the US presidency

http://jcgi.pathfinder.com/time/magazine/a...1626996,00.html
Will Gore get on the trail? - Time Magazine, June 11 (Letters to the editor) Includes this one from our own Doug Kelly
If my fellow Democrats want a Presidential nominee long on experience, vision and brains, they will persuade former Vice President Gore to throw his hat into the ring. President George W. Bush's disastrous terms have shown us all how hazardous it is to pick a President with very little relevant experience. Good intentions, handsome hairstyles and slick sound bites don't help much when the chips are down.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/books...-artslife-books
Money, TV, media concentration: Al Gore bravely takes them all on
The overwhelming scientific consensus has since confirmed Gore's years of warnings about the most important issue facing the planet, a stunning reversal that suggests those who mocked him were fools in the first place and that we can continue to ignore him only at our own peril.

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w070611&s=lizza061307
Al Gore's new theory
If I were a candidate--I'll do justice to your question to this extent: If I were a candidate, I would seek to engage people in a robust exchange of ideas on all these questions and find ways to use the new tools effectively. I know that some of the candidates who are out there are trying to do precisely that, and I give them credit for it and I wish them well.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/18/business...ia/18green.html
Gore to bring talk of green to ad festival
Mr. Gore is scheduled to address the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival as part of the windup leading to the Live Earth concerts on July 7, which are intended to raise awareness of the issue of climate change.

http://www.designobserver.com/archives/022771.html
Gore for president
It's difficult, perhaps impossible to imagine a fundamentally different future under a McCain or a Clinton or an Obama administration. (What it is easy to envision is an even more political minefield.) But there's something about Al Gore's commitment to the future — to saving the planet and protecting the future of our children — that's compelling no matter who you are, no matter what your race, gender, nationality or your political leanings. Is it naive to cast a vote based on the candidate who most believes in the future, everyone's future? Or is it, quite frankly, necessary?

http://www.buffalonews.com/185/story/100715.html
Moving intelligence to the back of the classroom
The problem is that the electorate seems as incurious as the officials it elected. The Congress and the court system, according to Gore, are in a shambles. Both have been pummeled by an executive branch grasping for previously unheard-of power.

Today's interview . . .

Robert Shrum, Democratic strategist interviewed on CNNs Reliable Sources - 6/17/07
He's been involved in almost every Democratic presidential campaign since 1976 but has never worked for a winner. He is an ad maker, a message man, a strategist, and a talk show regular who tries to sell the media on the virtues of his candidate. His services so eagerly sought after that the competition is called the "Shrum primary". But he is also a lightning rod for press criticism. Robert Shrum is out with a memoir called "No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner". I spoke with him earlier here in Washington.

KURTZ: Bob Shrum, welcome.
ROBERT SHRUM, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Thank you. Happy to be here.
KURTZ: All the presidential campaigns you were involved in, you dealt with reporters as much as anybody. Did you find that journalists were perhaps excessively cynical about what you did, what your candidates did? Thinking that every single thing, every thought uttered, every position taken was for political advantage?
SHRUM: I'll give you a prime -- yes, I think that quite often happened, though I'll give you a prime example.
Al Gore actually strongly felt that Elian Gonzalez should not be returned to Cuba and said to me at one point -- I write about it in the book -- "Would we send a kid back to East Germany at the height of the Cold War?" And people assumed that it was all about winning Florida. Now, we did want to win Florida. We were going to put Florida into play. But he had a very strong feeling about it and a long history of anticommunist credentials to back it up. But it was just very easy. The other thing that happens is, once a stereotype takes hold, it's very hard to get rid of it. Al Gore never said he invented the Internet, but it just became an easy shorthand with which to label him.
KURTZ: And an unfair shorthand on the part of the press?
SHRUM: Yes, I think it was unfair. What he said was he introduced the legislation in the Senate that led to the commercialization and the technology in the Pentagon, and that's absolutely right.
KURTZ: Sure, on that point. But you write that you warned him and others warned him about his tendency to embellish and exaggerate, knowing that this was a narrative that the press had -- was feasting on.
SHRUM: Well, we said before the first debate, the one thing we have to absolutely make certain of is that we don't say anything, that you don't say anything that we're not absolutely sure of. And on the way to Boston, just before we left our debate prep site, a father gave him a letter with a newspaper clipping about a young girl who had to stand in her classroom in Sarasota. And he looked at it and decided -- there were no seats -- and decided to talk about it. Well, of course the principal reacted defensively and said, A, she has a seat now, and, B, she always had a stool. And that became an exaggeration. Now, the truth -- it's sort of like the sides. I mean, in a way, if you'll read that debate and look at the substance of that debate, Al Gore wins that debate against George Bush hands down. But the Rove-Bush campaign did a very good job of sculpting the message and saying it was about sighing. You know, I'd rather have a president who sighed in a debate than one who lied us into a war.
KURTZ: Since we're talking about the former vice president, the 2000 convention, the speech, you worked very hard on that speech. Gore said he wrote the speech.
SHRUM: Right.
KURTZ: A "New York Times" reporter asked you who wrote the speech. How did you handle that?
SHRUM: I said that Gore wrote the speech. Carter Eskew, my partner and Gore's friend of 30 years, had a better answer which I can't repeat exactly. It's in the book and it was in "The Times," and I think it was something like, "Every part of that speech is, in a very real sense, his, if you know what I mean." I just wasn't clever enough to come up with something like that.
KURTZ: So you were misleading instead? You plead guilty in the book.
SHRUM: What am I going to say?
KURTZ: All right. Now, you say that Al Gore was hypersensitive about his press coverage, particularly that in "The New York Times". What do you make of this fabulous, some would say fawning, coverage that Gore, the Oscar winner, is receiving right now?
SHRUM: I think as long as he's a subjunctive candidate for president, he'll continue to get it. I think if he runs for president again -- and I have no idea whether he will -- he'll begin to get some critical coverage again.
KURTZ: But what explains this dichotomy, this -- you know, if you're not running, everybody falls in love with you. We see a little bit of that with Fred Thompson.
SHRUM: Right.
KURTZ: And the day you announce, all these reporters start asking annoying questions.
SHRUM: Well, I mean, I've seen this all the way back to 1979 to 1980, when people were saying to Senator Kennedy, "Come on in, run against Jimmy Carter. You know you're way ahead, it will be great." And then when he got in, it became in some ways a very tough campaign. But...
KURTZ: Do reporters change their view of how they should cover the politician, the public figure, once somebody is in the campaign?
SHRUM: I don't think there's anything unfair about it. I just think they get more critical. They ask tougher questions. I'm not bothered by that. I think before someone gets in, the natural story is, is he going to run? It's like Al Gore is running right now the greatest non-campaign campaign we've ever seen. Three thousand people wait outside a book signing and chant, "Run, Al, run!"