What is one to make of Al Gore? The former Vice President (introduced stumblingly by Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell as “Former President”) spent his SXSW Interactive address exhibiting a fire in the belly that has only manifested itself during his post-election career. To the democratic faithful, Gore was the profoundest of disappointments 13 years ago, blowing (with help from Donna Brazile et al) what was arguably the surest thing in American politics. To ride in on the coattails of a tremendously popular two-term president, all Gore had to do was play it safe.
And perhaps, therein lies the problem. The impersonation of a charmless android that Darrell Hammond droned into the public consciousness on Saturday Night Live was, if anything, not exaggerated enough and neither was Gore the candidate.
So, who the hell is this genuinely passionate, charismatic speaker that the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg interviewed before a packed house in Austin on Saturday? Certainly not the person from that campaign.
But this is well trodden ground. Plenty of ink has been already been spilled on Gore’s seeming transformation. Gore’s target is no longer one candidate or campaign; his new book has an imposing title, The Future, and is full of imposing ideas. The book enumerates six drivers of global change, which Gore described as, “Pregnant with the fraternal twins of danger and opportunity.” It’s worth noting that Gore wasn’t completely able to go through and list all six of these drivers by name, not because of lack of knowledge of his own material, but because the list became muddled somewhere around driver number three as Gore became increasingly impassioned and deviated from his own talking points.
For the sake of clarity, it bears repeating: Al Gore became so impassioned, he deviated from his own talking points.
And the points upon which Gore became impassioned were many indeed. Some of the highlights:
Our Democracy has been hacked.
The Congress today is utterly and completely incapable of passing any bill of any significance without getting permission from the interests it affects the most.
The NRA is a complete fraud.
We have to reverse and overturn the Citizens United decision. Corporations are not people, money is not speech, our democracy is not dead!
This last accompanied by a vigorous thump on the arm of his chair.
Democrats would’ve been ecstatic and Republicans apoplectic (which, while not positive, is at least a measurable reaction) upon hearing such remarks in 2000. Which is, of course, exactly the difference. This incarnation of Al Gore, no longer with a presidency at stake, has no reason not to speak his mind and speak it forcefully.
This isn’t to imply that Gore spent the hour ranting and raving. In fact, the recognizable flaw that remains from the Gore of old is a tendency to cite examples that back up his points with such rapidity that the cohesion of his overall message is lost in a stream of factoids.
- Dairy cows implanted with biometric sensors that send a text message to their farmer when the cows ovulate.
- Goats genetically modified to secrete spider silk from their udders along with milk.
- Statistics on climate change.
- Wealth disparity.
- The insidiousness of using GDP to calculate the health of an economy.
The former VP invoked all of these along with many more besides.
It’s possible that Al Gore is best encountered in book form. A self-imposed structure and ample space for citations can only do him good. As for his goals — a more transparent democracy free of financial influence from special interests, less intrusions on our privacy from technology, and regulation of medical and energy industries — Gore can still make an intelligent case for their importance, but now there’s some fire behind it.
“Dairy cows implanted with biometric sensors that send a text message to their farmer when the cows ovulate.”
Seth Meyers covered this on Weekend Update. Punch line: “The most disturbing part of the new system is that the text the cow sends reads, ‘Hey, you up?'”