Run, Al, Run-If Gore wins the Nobel Peace Prize, will he run for president? (Christopher Hitchens?)

[kpete]

Run, Al, Run
If Gore wins the Nobel Peace Prize, will he run for president?
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Sept. 24, 2007, at 12:00 PM ET

...................
On Oct. 12, we shall hear again from Oslo, and I will be very surprised indeed if the peace prize is not awarded to Albert Gore Jr. (Don't ask what a campaign against global warming has done for "peace"; that would be like asking what Mother Teresa or Henry Kissinger had ever done to reduce global conflict. The impression is the main thing.)

So, and if I am right, the former vice president will then complete a year in which An Inconvenient Truth has been awarded an Oscar and he has authored a best seller. Roll it round your tongue again: an Oscar, a best seller, and a Nobel Prize in the space of 12 months or so. Not bad. And meanwhile, the field of Democratic candidates looks—how shall one put it?—a trifle etiolated. Sen. Clinton may have succeeded in getting people to call her "Hillary" and to have made them feel resigned to her front-runnership, but what kind of achievement is that? Sen. Obama cannot possibly believe, and doesn't even act as if he believes, that he can be elected president of the United States next year. John Edwards is a good man who is in politics for good reasons, but there is something about his populism that doesn't quite—what's the word?—translate.

.........................

I am only guessing here, but I think that when Gore wakes up early and upset, he isn't whimpering about the time that the Supreme Court finally ruled against him in 2000. He is whimpering about the time in 1992 when he left the field open to Bill Clinton, a man he secretly despised. Can he really stand to watch yet another Clinton walk away with a nomination that could have been, or could still be, his? To move, then, from a consideration of elevated politics to a reflection upon the baser motives, we have to ask if Gore can possibly be content to be a "citizen" when he could still be a contender.

This consideration might be in his mind already. (It would be astonishing if it were not.) And of course it's been noticed that he coyly refuses to make a Sherman declaration about the possibility or otherwise of a run. That's ordinary—and annoying. What isn't ordinary is the possibility that a boring and cynical election process might be given a jolt and that the current brokers and managers of the Democratic Party might be given a jolt as well.


more at:
http://www.slate.com/id/2174590/

[polichick]

1. I've always thought Gore would announce one way or the other...

...after the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded. It would really surprise me if he endorsed someone else before then.

[northzax]

2. don't forget his Emmy...

unlike Hitchens, it would suprise me greatly to see the committee involve themselves in US domestic politics to this extent.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

5. Ordinarily, I'd agree

But under these circumstances, US Domestic Policy is going to greatly impact global policy in any number of different areas. The committee may not be LIKELY to consider that, but it probably will to some extent.

[jojo54]

3. I would much rather a president who's won the Nobel than

an idiot that got a C GPA at Yale!!!

[KoKo]

4. I wish I could take that pit viper Hitchens, seriously. What's he up to...

RUN AL RUN! Let's hope what Hitchens is hearing has some truth. I just worry that this would delight Hitchens so much that it portends how the attack machine is desperate for a new victim...given Hithens thinks this election cycle is shaping up to be so boring...