I mean, please. Let's get real. Of course he's running.
Are we to believe that a man who has spent most of his life in public office, like his father before him, is happy to turn away at the very moment the country -- nay, the world -- is clamoring for him to step into the breach?
Are we to believe that such a man is perfectly content to walk away from the table, with his last campaign forever emblazoned in textbooks as the biggest miscarriage of justice in electoral history?
Are we to believe that this man, with his Oscar nominated documentary, his Time magazine cover, his # 1 Bestselling book, his tv network, and, oh yeah, a 2007 Nobel Peace Prize nomination, would rather not rule the most powerful nation on earth?
This is beginning to remind me of movie stars who insist they'd really prefer to be incognito. Never mind that their whole lives have been spent in rabid pursuit of fame. Fame at all costs. They just wish they could be ordinary.
So why can't we just let Mr. Gore be ordinary? Is it because he is so extraordinary? I happen to think so. But that's just me... And, apparently, the citizens of Pennsylvania, who have put him ahead of all candidates, Democrat and Republican, in yesterday's polling. Still, he says he "has no plans to run." Right, and Judi Dench thinks it's an honor just to be nominated.
Asking Gore the Big Question over the weekend, our own Arianna was savvy enough to put his response in parenthesis, "(sorry, there was no new answer!)," an acknowledgement that the answer has never been a clear yes or no, but a tightrope act with which we are all too familiar. And yet, it is tantalizing. Who knew Al Gore was such a great tease? The worse the world gets, the more we want to know his political ambitions... and the less he will tell us.
So we resort to reading tea leaves. Is he losing weight? My sources on the ground say yes, though he was looking big in the hips on The Daily Show. But he wore black-- was he making an effort at personal vanity? He's let his hair go grey... a move towards authenticity, or total surrender? And what about commenter # 181 on Arianna's interview piece who said his handshake has gotten firmer, he's working out again? It's all too excruciating. Has the fate of the free world come down to Al Gore's carb count? Maybe it has. Or has it come down to numbers... how well Hillary and Obama fare in the coming months?
Gore has been railing against money in the political system lately, the cost of those 30 second ads. He knows a little something about this. His father lost his Senate seat because of Nixon's dirty tricks fund. Al pushed for reform from his first days in the House, to no avail. Today, he looks to the internet for the future of democracy. As he told Arianna, "The Internet is beginning to bring about some very positive changes in this area... The E=MC2 of American democracy is John Locke's formulation that all just power derives from the consent of the governed -- and that consent assumes an environment where there can be an open and accessible exchange of ideas." Well, guess who is deriving the power from the internet? Even if he didn't invent it, you'd think he did when you see sites like:
www.draftgore.comwww.petitiononline.com/AG2008/petition.htmldraftgore2008.org/www.algore-08.com/www.electgore2008.com/
But maybe it's all fantasy. Wishful thinking. Maybe Mr. Gore would rather fly around the world with his PowerPoint in coach, than with Executive power on Air Force One. Maybe he finds the Shanghai Holiday Inn more comfy than 1600 Pennsylvania. Maybe his time as a candidate has passed and we're all holding on to some sepia-toned dream of what could have been.
Or maybe it is, after all, an honor just to be nominated. One last time.