Today’s story on Al Gore not running (yet?) comes from The Los Angeles Times. One Hollywood publicist feels as I do, that Gore is watching how the race turns out and hasn’t made a decision:
Clearly, the remaining Arctic and Antarctic ice could shrink to fill a cocktail shaker before even the most skilled forensic psychologist (or screenwriter) figures out exactly how Gore is leaning on this matter.
This much is evident: The man who spends most of his life these days warning about dire events looming in humanity’s future is, in fact, living in the moment politically.
“Al has made a very smart choice in not entering the fray and waiting to see what happens,” says longtime Hollywood publicist Howard Bragman. “We haven’t seen how things are going to play out with the current candidates.
“I honestly believe he hasn’t made up his mind.”
If Gore does enter the race, Bragman says, he’ll have endless fundraising opportunities in Hollywood, no matter how far along in the electoral script he might make an entrance.
“They gave the guy an Oscar, after all,” Bragman says, referring to the best documentary award given to “An Inconvenient Truth.” “He’s not only adored in Hollywood as a politician but also as a member of the community, as a filmmaker. He can marshal support from all the power players.”
Gore isn’t even sure that politics is the field for him:
Privately, it’s obvious that Gore isn’t over the sting of the 2000 election. The prospect of another national political campaign genuinely confounds him.
“I don’t think I’m particularity good at politics,” he confessed in the interview at the Four Seasons. “There are a lot of things about politics as it currently exists that I don’t think I’m necessarily very skilled at.
“I’m not being falsely self-critical. I just find that I have less patience and tolerance for the contrivances and artifices that seem to succeed in the current political environment. The balance has shifted in American politics to reward an emphasis on means rather than ends, toward manipulation rather than reasoned discussion.”
He wonders if the politics of reason faces a “headwind” in the current political culture.
“I’m under no illusion there is any position in the world with as much potential to change the course of events as the president of the United States,” he says. “I don’t misunderstand that. But that’s not the same as concluding that that’s the best way for me personally.”
Having “less patience and tolerance for the contrivances and artifices” might be exactly what we need in a candidate.
