Reply #52: No Question - He Should Run

[Andrea]

This isn't in keeping with the light-hearted tone of this thread, but I think people will agree with the sentiment. I posted this elsewhere, but that thread fell off quickly and hardly anyone saw it. This is my response to a column by John Nichols in The Nation.

Link to column: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/12/opinion/main3361667.shtml



This column from the Nation is a great piece of writing and makes a valid point, but it stops short of making the most important point. Yes, if Al Gore doesn't run for President, there will be a hole in his resume, and that might concern him a bit. What should concern him more, and probably does concern him more if he looks at it this way, is not what this would do to his resume, but what it means for this country and the planet. Mr. Gore is not petty and won't make this momentous decision based on a vanity issue such as his resume.

The planet is at a crucial juncture. What occurs in the next few years will determine whether we go beyond the point of no return on global warming or we take the steps necessary to save Earth as we know it.

Our country is teetering on the sheer edge of a rocky and treacherous cliff with regard to the survival of our civil liberties and our tripartite system of government as laid out in our constitution. If the very nature of our country, as designed by the founding fathers, is destroyed, America itself is destroyed. There may still be a huge chunk of land on the map labeled "United States of America", but that country will not be our country. Unitary Executive is just a nice-sounding euphemism for Dictator.

It could be argued that Mr. Gore will have as much, or possibly more, opportunity to influence the awareness of global warming as an absolutely critical issue if he remains a private citizen. Obviously he has a tremendous opportunity to stimulate public awareness now, as a private citizen. After all, he just won the Nobel Peace Prize for doing so - and winning the award does not by any means mean that the job is over. But, he will not have the opportunity to determine policy if he is not the President.

With regard to the other issue, the preservation of our constitution and thus the very nature of our nation, none of the current candidates have indicated a full acknowledgment of this critical issue. Most haven't mentioned it much at all. Perhaps some relish the thought that if elected they will enjoy the concentrated, extreme and unconstitutional power that Bush and Cheney have given the presidency. His book, The Assault on Reason, as well as his speeches, demonstrate that Mr. Gore has the entire picture and can communicate it clearly, effectively, completely and with great passion. The only person who will be in a position to guarantee that we do not fall off this cliff into totalitarianism is the person inaugurated as president in January, 2009.

If our course remains the same , someday soon, maybe three years from now, maybe five, but very soon, we will be waking up every day in a dictatorship. This will be a tragedy of monumental proportions. I can't express the profound grief I feel over the loss of this "noble experiment" in democracy. I can't imagine the pain of regret I would feel to wake up in such circumstances knowing that I had been the person who could have prevented it, but I chose not to. I don't think Mr. Gore wants to find out first hand how that would feel.