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The movie Inconvenient Truth displays some very relevant traits of Al Gore's character that have been clear to anyone paying attention throughout the former V.P.'s career in politics. This nation and this world are in dire need of a leader with these traits, the following of which are in ghastly contrast to our current president.
Completely regardless of the documentary's subject matter, the following aspects of Al Gore are plainly displayed - aspects that our national leadership have been without for far too long and are needed sooner rather than later:
1. He genuinely cares about the entire planet and everyone in it. The life of a farmer in Nepal is no less valuable than that of a corporate executive.
2. He understands that actions have consequences, that occasionally what is good for us now may cause harm in the future, and he is not afraid to be an unwelcome challenger of the elite-friendly status quo.
3. He is intellectually curious. He wants to understand the nature of things in order to act in an informed way.
4. He works from facts and observations as a means to form his conclusions.
5. His selfless care for future generations is real to the point that he is deeply concerned about the consequences of our current actions that will not be felt until he is long gone.
6. He feels a responsibility as a powerful and public figure to secure the well-being of people all over the world.
7. He is a worker by nature. He devotes his free time to solving problems, which could easily be spent in leisurely retirement.
8. He takes ownership of a problem with the attitude that it is up to him to address it, and up to him to convince others to join him.
What better way is there to address the criminal incompetence of the Bush administration with a leader who is a perfect contradiction to George W. Bush?
George W. Bush doesn't understand the planet or its people, which wouldn't be a crime in itself except for the fact that he isn't interested in the planet or its people. He is intellectually lazy. He doesn't know anything, and he doesn't feel like he needs to know anything. The fact that he relies on his "gut" instead of knowledge as a means to direct the policy of the most influential nation on the planet is a point of pride for him, which is to be expected of someone who snickers at people who dare think about problems before acting on them.
His intellectual laziness is only matched by his poor work ethic. George W. Bush is the president of the United States, an opportunity hardly matched by any other position in the history of human civilization. And how does George W. Bush spend this opportunity? On vacation. The presidency is little more for him than a fantasy camp where he gets to dress up and look important, and say neat stuff to cameras. Even when he's actually in Washington he's been seen jogging or biking in the middle of a work day, leaving his work for others.
And what kind of sociopath pokes fun, consistently, at the kind of cataclysmic human death occurring in Iraq? He makes jokes about how his justification for war was completely false. It doesn't occur to him to interrupt a joyful photo-op tour when an entire U.S. city is literally drowning to death. He chuckles when confronted by a reporter about the conditions in Iraq. He considers his policy of never admitting a mistake far and away more important than changing a disastrous strategy that continues to devour the lives of Iraqi civilians and U.S. troops. If George W. Bush doesn't know you, he doesn't care about you. If you aren't a friend of the family, your life is nothing, and your suffering and death as a consequence of his actions is not permitted to dent the tranquil ignorance of his tiny mind.
In 2008, we need a president who is everything that George W. Bush is not. And that president is Al Gore. We already elected him once, so why not actually put him in office where he belongs? As Kinky Friedman might say, how hard could it be?
Draft Gore 2008.
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