“You read that right. When. Why am I so certain? I have of course no inside knowledge. None. Yet I've been certain that he would get in ever since I first saw An Inconvenient Truth, a year and a half ago. And my certainty has only grown since then. Am I delusional? Hardly. I just use a different primary premise for my opinion. Disclaimer: I am not an American. I can't vote in your election, though I've followed your politics almost obsessively ever since watching the 2000 election debacle live on television (Canadians have a front-row seat when it comes to watching you). No, my friends. The timing of Gore's entry is not so much to do with Hillary, ballot deadlines or any Hamlet-like hesitations on Gore's part as it is about a meeting of world leaders on climate in Bali in Decemberand all the meetings that will follow in the coming years and that will ultimately decide the fate of humanity on this planet. (SEE UPDATE lower down).
* Barcelona's diary :: ::
*
Now first off, let me just address the doubters on this one. We've all heard your reasons and you're entitled to them. Fair enough. To take an example, one frequent rebuttal now doing the rounds (for the umpteenth time) is that Gore "hasn't the stomach" (dixit the doubters) for a run any more. Because he's "fallen out of love with politics". He said so himself. He's even written a book to explain why the system is so "toxic", so "broken", so "sclerotic" (all his words, absolutely). But to "logically conclude" from his devastating critique of that "toxic process" that Gore has "decided to stay out" (he has made no such assertion) is basically to judge him as a coward. For if he is truely convinced the system is as broken as he claims, and with the level of righteous anger he expresses, given his particular skill set and depth of experience of that system, for him to decline to attempt to fix it would be akin to a top-flight neuro-surgeon diagnosing a deadly but still-operable brain tumor and telling the patient he won't operate because he's fallen out of love with surgery...
So let's put that meme to rest right now, shall we? I think we can all agree that the proof is in. The man is a lion. Anyone who can come out of the crucible of 2000 to face down the petro-denialists and singlehandedly put the arcane issue of global warming at the top of the international agenda is no shrinking violet. He's a giant-slayer and a hero. Face it: Al Gore has finally come into his own, as a human being AND as a politician. If you haven't heard him lately, he gives a barn-burner of a stump speech on Restoring Democracy, the Constitution and the Rule of Law in America.
But the main reason I'm so convinced he will run is the same reason he's been barnstorming around the world for the past five years trying to alert the entire human race to the unprecedented danger it and we all face. Because he takes what he calls a planetary emergency very seriously, so seriously he has made it the single driving focus of his life, his raison d'être. It is that deathly serious, do or die, life-and-death issue that has liberated him to speak so much truth to Power and to speak out so forcefully not only on climate, but on Iraq, on the Patriot Act, on Warrantless Wiretapping, on the Unitary Executive, on the suspension of Habeas Corpus, on Torture, and on every other egregious power-grab by this administration, long before it was popular and long before any one else had the courage and vision to do so.” Cont…
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/10/10/8383/4812
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
