Knight Ridder reported an interesting incident that occurred lately at a book signing Al Gore attended. A fan thrust a book at hime to sign with a the following question inside:
Running in '08?
with check-off boxes next to the words:
Yes
No
Again Gore refused to rule out running by writing plans next to No and then checking that box.
"He says he has no plans. But plans change", said Angela Cortez...
A Gore insider goes further, saying Gore is running a "brillant campaign", full qoute after the break.
While it's not a traditional campaign, "it's the most brillant campaign anyone is running right now", said Martin Peretz, a long time Gore friend and the editor-in-chief of the New Republic..."It may be the most brillant campaign launch in our time".
This does not mean that Gore is just another cynical pol though, as another Democrat points out in the article:
"If he is running, he's doing all the right things," said Brian Melendez, the chairman of the state Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota. "He tried it the traditional way last time and look what that got him. This time, he's a passionate man indulging his passion. If that happens to take off for him in the next year, he would be very well positioned."
This is exactly what I have come to believe. Gore is completely sincere when he says he is "done with politics". He has had enough of that, but if he can win by running an anti-politics campaign that focuses on the most important threat to our survival, he most certainly will do so. Meanwhile, he gets to be himself and escapes the meatgrinder of retail politics. As another operative states:
"He's got the best of both worlds", said Terry Lierman, the Democratic State party chairman in Maryland. "He's not chasing it, and he's being pursued."
To those who say that Gore cannot possibly be doing any these things because it would somehow mean he wasn't sincere, I fall back on my hero Lincoln. No one was more sincere than Lincoln, and yet he was as crafty as they come... which is why he was so successful.
And while Gore is completely sincere IMHO, if he has no hopes that he might be able to use the presidency to combat global warming, how else can one explain the fact that the movie was released just as others are starting to make thier rounds in Iowa and New Hampshire?
Read the whole article, it is great. I will post the link in the comments.