An Inconvenient Truth

One of my most insistent thoughts coming out of the theater was how much better I understood why a strong politician like Clinton would choose somebody like Gore as a Vice-President. Because he's a political neuter. Whether by choice, circumstance, or whatever reason, Gore does not have the stones to challenge authority directly. Yes, he's a very nice guy and I'm sure I'd love to sit down to dinner with him, but this very real problem of climate change, which he occasionally very eloquently and humorously describes, is not about to be fixed by admonitions that people buy energy efficient toasters. Speaking truth to power isn't about a slide-show presentation, nor stacks of scientific studies. It's a tough business that crushes people in the process. "Inconvenient" doesn't meet that standard of brutal political necessity.

You can see this deficiency best, perhaps, in Gore's explanations of himself. He speaks movingly of the near-fatal automobile accident that hospitalized his young son some years ago, and his sister's death from cancer. I do believe these things motivate him to seek a higher purpose. But then we come to several violin heavy passages regarding his 2000 loss. Oh, 'tough vote count.' 'But we must pick ourselves up and move on.' 'The good boy scout.' Excuse me, but I don't think people really do get second chances except when they are fully aware, or try to be, of what went wrong the first time round. On this, Gore is the proverbial blank. You'd think he'd at least nod to the fact that he was so inept a campaigner he couldn't carry his own state of Tennessee, or Clinton's Arkansas. Nope. Nor any admission that registered, for me, of how badly he'd let people down. Which is entirely consistent with his stunning omission of real considerations of what's required for political change. He takes you just so far, then it's back to the family farm, a reverie from the boy who didn't know the difference between work and play.