Whatยs with Al Gore? Can it be that the former presidential
candidate has become a new all-purpose Paul Revere?ย
Mere days before he was to sound a highly public alarm this week in Atlanta about what he sees as the drastic erosion of Americansย civil liberties, Gore had appeared before a Standing-Room-Only audience in Nashville to deliver an apocalyptic ย if highly
specific –forecast about the planetยs imminent ruin from global warming.
Actually, this synopsis understates both cases. The
exhaustive (detractors might say ยexhaustingย) address in Atlanta, on Mondayยs
Martin Luther King holiday, was a detailed excursion through the history of
abuse of power at the presidential level ย culminating in and focusing on Goreยs
excoriation of George W. Bushยs newly revealed domestic wiretaps.
Even so, Gore, now a media entrepreneur and corporate
rainmaker, was scrupulously bipartisan down in Georgia. His Atlanta speech was
jointly sponsored by the Liberty Coalition and the American Constitution Society
for Law and Policy, two right-of-center groups. And the venue for the former
Democratic standard-bearer was the Daughters of the American Revolutionยs
Constitution Hall, where he was introduced by none other than former Republican
congressman Bob Barr, a conservativeยs conservative and a relentless scourge of
former President Bill Clinton throughout the Monica Lewinsky affair.
What Gore had done at Nashville last week was even more
devoid of politics in the usual sense. Appearing as part of a regular lecture
series at Vanderbilt University, he gave what was not so much a lecture as a
fully-fledged course in the dire environmental consequences of polluting the
earth at the current pell-mell rate.
Introducing himself at Vanderbilt thusly, ยI am Al Gore. I used to be the next president of the United States,ย the self-described
ยrecovering politicianย then stood modestly in a darkened auditorium at the
bottom of a huge, wall-sized screen and narrated a slide show to end all slide
shows ย employing scores upon scores of stills and videos dealing with every
aspect of his subject.
A partial list of the contents: Hybrid energy sources, the
greenhouse-gas effect, Third-World environmental practices, the proliferation of
carbon dioxide, the convection energy of hurricanes, the evaporation of
drinking-water sources on the Tibetan plateau (river by river), the paradoxical
flood-drought syndrome, melting methane in Siberia, pine-beetle infestation in
the American West, the ยNorth Atlantic Pump,ย the history of the Ice Age, the
physics of solar-ray absorption, the dangerously increasing incidence of
ยmoulinsย (vertical troughs) in the polar ice capsย
.
And Gore made it clear he knows whereof he speaks
concerning this all-inclusive ยnature hike through the Book of Revelationย ย
pointing out, for example, that he had made two fact-finding trips under the
North Pole by submarine.
Disingenuously or not, he went so far as to make the claim
that his initial run for the presidency, in 1988, was driven by a need to
communicate the facts concerning the growing environmental peril. And anyone who
thought Goreยs subsequent 1991 bestseller, Earth in the Balance, was
ghostwritten or mere political boilerplate might well have been disabused of
such notions by being in the audience at Vanderbilt.
To be sure, Gore the partisan politician surfaced here and
there in Nashville. Mocking an old prep-school science teacher of his who had
been woefully ignorant on the subject of continental drift, Gore cracked, ยHe
went on to become science adviser to the current White House.ย
Much more typical, though, was Goreยs lament, after a
discourse on soul evaporation in Darfur: ยHow in the world do you put that in
the political dialogue with issues like ย I donยt know, the ones that are talked
about?ย
Tongue-tied as that might have sounded (and reminiscent of
his political stump style), the erstwhile veep was eloquence itself when he got
into his peroration: ยIf we allow this [environmental destruction] to happen, it
is deeply and unforgivably immoral and unethical. This really is not a political
issue. It is a moral issue. It is a spiritual issue. It is an ethical issue.ย
This new Al Gore ย awkward, earnest and somewhat bumptious
but sincerely and endearingly so, in the manner of oneยs favorite college
professor ย just might be an improvement over the old one. In losing his
presidential race and (evidently) his prospects in the political constellation,
Gore might finally have found his place in a larger one.
(Jackson
Baker is a Flyer senior editor.)
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