Hitch on Gore

The latest pile of slop disgorged by the tiresome Hitchens, in which he address the possibilities that Al Gore will win the Nobel Prize and run for president, has many things wrong with it, most of which is handily taken care of by R-Far (and Sully comments on a particularly silly bit, too).

I can't let pass without comment, however, this preposterous assertion:

Should he make up his mind not to run, he would retrospectively abolish all the credit he has acquired so far. It would mean in effect that he never had the stuff to do the job and that those who worked and voted for him were wasting their time. Given his age and his stature, can he really want that to be the conclusion that history draws?

What in the bloody hell is Hitchens prattling on about? No, deciding not to campaign for the presidency in 2008 would not "retroactively abolish all the credit he has acquired so far." If anything, there is a more viable argument to be made that jumping into the race at this point would rob Gore of his capital as an advocate and statesman—an argument with which I happen to disagree, but regard as patently more meritorious than its opposite, being proposed here by Hitch.

No one adores and admires Al Gore, and wants him to run, more than I do; I've been longing for him to be my president for literally more than half my life. If he announced his candidacy, I'm certain I would faint dead away from happiness. But if he doesn't, I won't blame him a bit—and I certainly wouldn't consider having supported and voted for him a waste of my time, nor determine that he never had "the stuff to do the job."

Given the well-documented media hostility toward Gore, the means by which Bush was awarded the presidency after a bitter race in which Gore carried a majority of the voters if not the electoral college, and the far-reaching positive effects Gore has had advocating on behalf of his lifetime pet projects—the environment and the internet—not to mention the related personal success (writing a few bestselling books, launching a cable network, starring in the most successful documentary of all time, winning an Oscar, winning an Emmy, and getting nominated for the Nobel Prize), I almost can't imagine why he'd want to run for president again.

The truth is, we need him more than he needs the presidency. Eclipsing the most powerful position in the world with service to the global community is hardly evidence of not having the stuff to do the job of president. And if history draws the conclusion that he should have run, but didn't, I imagine he could live with that. After all, we had our chance to have a President Gore.