Al Gore’s Game

I shouldn’t have to say this, but no one gets it.

Al Gore is running. Al Gore is not running. Al Gore is running…

What Al Gore is doing is staying in the conversation. That’s what Al Gore is doing.

One line stuck out for me in a recent interview. "I wasn’t that good at politics," he said to Jon Stewart, almost as an aside. Stewart took it as part of his own self-deprecation schtick, but not only did Gore mean it, Gore was right.

Al Gore is not a great politician. He is, first and foremost, a journalist, an intellectual wannabe. His name got him into Congress, into the Senate, and into his first run at the White House, in 1988. But he wasn’t very good at it, and he’s still not very good at it.

Al Gore doesn’t do schmooze very well. Al Gore doesn’t do soundbites
very well. Al Gore doesn’t suffer fools gladly. He lacks even Richard
Nixon’s charm. Al Gore wants to talk at length about important things,
about the fate of the Earth or our 30-second mentality. But no one
wants to listen to any of it, not really. All they want to know is,
"are you running?"

So Gore answers honestly, "I don’t think so, I don’t have any plans
to," and then adds the truth, as an aside, "I’m not very good at it."
And the anchors all laugh, or speculate, or (worse) ask again. Be our
monkey, Al. Are you running? Whisper it in my ear….

What does Gore want to do? I don’t think he wants to run. I think he
wants to endorse. But if the speculation ends that he is running, his
endorsement means very little. If, on the other hand, people think he
is running, that he might run, that he might win, well then an October
or November endorsement means a great deal. It could be decisive.

You may consider this summer to be the Al Gore primary. Hillary
Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are all going to spend the next
few months, essentially running for one man’s endorsement. Because with
Gore will come the Netroots, with Gore will come the Very Serious
People, accused of wealth and guilty of education. With Gore will come
celebrity, Hollywood, and big money.

Al Gore knows the power of all that. Once he had it in his hands,
but he wasn’t very good at it, and history went by. All right, then.
History has always gone past his family, as his distant relative’s
series of novels (you didn’t know Gore Vidal once claimed him as a distant relative)
have made damned clear.

So he will do what journalists like myself can only dream of doing,
he will move history along just a little bit. He’ll hog as much of the
spotlight as he can, he’ll listen carefully to what all the candidates
say. He may meet with them, behind closed doors. Maybe he’ll diet a
little. And then, at the right time, at the dramatic moment, he’ll step
out from behind a curtain.

And endorse someone. (Who? I just spot trends, I don’t give away endings.)