My title here is a bumper sticker I now have on my car, one of several samples I recently had printed up. Why? The other night I went to see,” An Inconvenient Truth,” and it moved me to my core. It took me back many years to the first time I met Al Gore at Harvard Divinity School. He was a senator then, earnest, idealistic, personable and passionately committed to the cause of saving our fragile planet from environmental disaster. His book, “Earth in the Balance,” had just been published. I remember thinking at that time, “Boy would this guy make a great President!” Less than six months later he would join the ticket to run with Bill Clinton.
Last Sunday evening I joined the online MoveOn.org conference call with Gore and he inspired me yet again. There were perhaps a thousand of us on the call from all over the country. He spoke mostly about what has been happening with global warming since the film was made. He continues to collect slides that give evidence of this planetary climate crisis. He quoted Gandhi and spoke of his notion of “soul force,” and how we would need to call upon this in order to bring about change.
There was an opportunity to type in questions, and one that was asked repeatedly was, of course,” Would he run in 2008.?” While he said he had no plans to do this, he spoke as though he was leaving the door open a crack for the possibility. The pundits seem to think he would take a draft and I do too. I won’t enumerate here the reasons why I think he may be our best hope for 2008, since I mean this as a teaser, but we’ll be discussing it at our first Draft Gore 2008 Meetup. Why this early? We’re already hearing, Warner will save us, Feingold is our man, Hillary is inevitable, Kerry wants another chance, even though I’m convinced that Teresa doesn’t, and so forth. In truth the summer buzz belongs to Gore so if you are looking for a short respite from our obsession with state-wide races, join us in Cambridge, on the Summer Solstice as we consider, “The Case for Gore.” For details see the event calendar. Linda Sophia Pinti
As I told you, Linda, I’m not the biggest fan of Al Gore’s abilities at engaging the public. But he’s certainly a man of intelligence and conviction, so I’m open to further persuasion. Hopefully I can make the event @ Redline.