“Al Gore Might Yet Join 2008 Contenders,” a Wall Street Journal headline declared earlier this week.
“For former Vice President Al Gore, a rash of favorable publicity surrounding this month’s opening of his movie An Inconvenient Truth, and the growing political resonance of its subject — global warming — are stoking the most serious speculation about a Gore political comeback since his loss in the 2000 U.S. presidential election,” the Journal‘s Jackie Calmes reported.
The Journal piece both succinctly summarized and furthered the recent growing popularity of Gore in political (and political press) circles. While the former vice president has said repeatedly that he will not run for the Oval Office in 2008, the Journal found one former adviser not so convinced. “I do know that he’s thinking about it. I know for a fact,” the adviser said, adding that Gore has “talked to people about the pros and cons.”
The Journal reported that “Gore has begun assembling a Nashville, Tenn.-based operation to help with the demands on his time” from his work on global warming, and noted that Gore has recently been featured on the covers of Vanity Fair, Wired and The American Prospect, while making Time‘s list of the world’s 100 most influential people. Said Karen Skelton, Gore’s former political director: “His star will never be higher than it is right now with his movie coming out.”
Implicitly, the article said something else: If the Journal was weighing in, then the talk about Gore and’08 had reached a new level.
Gore’s profile has been building steadily in recent months — first through several withering, attention-grabbing attacks on Bush administration policies, and now with the buzz surrounding An Inconvenient Truth, which will debut, along with a book of the same title, later this month.
In phase one of the buildup, journalists reported on the latest news Gore had made, then considered — based on the tiny bit of wiggle room Gore has left regarding his political future — the distant possibility of Gore making one last run for the presidency in 2008.
After he delivered a January speech blasting Bush’s domestic spying program, UPI reported that “Gore looks to be repositioning himself as a potential presidential candidate.” In a story March 21, Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Scott Shepard weighed the possibilities, asking, “Is history calling Al Gore back into the political fray?”
The day before, Gore had told an audience at Middle Tennessee State University, while delivering one of his global warming lectures, “I’m not planning to be a candidate again.” But that statement came with a qualifier: “I haven’t reached a stage in my life where I’m willing to say I will never consider something like this.”
That was enough for CNN’s Bill Schneider to enthusiastically push forward the idea of a new Gore candidacy on The Situation Room. “Not planning? That’s not definitive,” Schneider said. “If there’s a groundswell for Gore, he might reconsider.”
Now, in the past few weeks, phase two has arrived — and Gore’s potential comeback, at least in the media, is moving from remote possibility to probability.
In an online column posted April 28, Newsweek‘s Eleanor Clift cranked the speculation up a notch, writing, “Getting the country to face up to global warming is his life’s mission, and it could be his ticket to the presidency.” While Gore told her in an interview that he is not running for office — “I’ve been there and done that” — Clift had this to say:
Nobody believes him. By not playing the overt political game, Gore may be putting in place the first issue-driven campaign of the 21st century, one that is premised on a big moral challenge that is becoming more real with soaring gas prices and uncertain oil supplies. A senior Democrat who once ran for the White House himself but harbors no illusions the party will turn to him in 2008 looks at Gore and marvels, “This guy is running the best campaign I’ve seen for president.”
Whether he is or isn’t running almost doesn’t matter. Gore has the luxury of waiting until late in the political season to announce. He has universal name recognition, a proven ability to raise money, and he can tap into the MoveOn.org machinery to launch a grass-roots campaign.
Later, Clift invoked a popular parallel, comparing Gore to another vice president who “lost narrowly, retreated to private life,” and then returned from the political wilderness to “win the presidency. His name was Richard Nixon.” Gore is now up for “his Richard Nixon remake,” she concluded — following in Nixon’s footsteps 40 years later.
In the last week or so, speculation surrounding a Gore candidacy has intensified even further.
“If Al Gore is not planning to throw his hat in the ring for president in 2008, he’s doing an excellent imitation of someone who is,” wrote Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page, adding that “his cause is beginning to bear more than a passing resemblance to a national political crusade that, with a little tweaking here and there, could be transformed overnight into a weapons-grade presidential campaign.” (In a different fashion — “‘Googled’ Gore’s Fat War Chest” — the New York Post made a similar point yesterday.)
“[H]ere comes Al Gore. The mere mention of a Gore candidacy has been the most popular story in the Wall Street Journal for the last two days,” Larry Kudlow noted on CNBC’s Kudlow & Company Tuesday. “We’re going to cover Al Gore a lot, because I really think this is terribly interesting.”
We’re left with two thoughts on all this:
One clear reason the press seems so intrigued by the Gore resurrection narrative is that a Gore comeback would make for an incredible story, and, more than anything, journalists yearn for amazing stories. That said, we wish political journalists would take off their cynical blinkers and 2008-tinted glasses long enough to give more credence to Gore when he says that combating global warming is his passion and repeats, over and over, that he is not running for president. The Boston Globe‘s Peter Canellos is one of the few who have done that, writing in a March column that “Gore seems to be embracing his new role as an activist, not a candidate.” His 2000 defeat, Canellos perceptively added, “provided an unexpected release: the freedom to speak with fuller honesty.”
Our second point is more subtle: the unspoken, unacknowledged role of the political press in building up Gore’s (still-unlikely) candidacy. As we’ve noted before, reporters like to pretend they are umpires, not players on the field, but it’s a distinction without a difference. Every time a Jackie Calmes, an Eleanor Clift, a Clarence Page, a Bill Schneider or a Larry Kuplow speculates about a Gore bandwagon they are implicitly constructing one. With each story, Gore’s profile increases. Every time they ask him about it, the resulting coverage can only add to the possibility that Gore will, someday, actually commit to his Nixonian remake.
However indirectly or unacknowledged, each new story sets the stage for Al Gore — Democratic candidate — to make a return.
Edward B. Colby was a writer at CJR Daily.