A conversation with Al Gore
By: John F. Harris
May 31, 2007 05:09 PM EST It sounded for a moment like Al Gore was ready to make some news.
The Iraq war, he said in an interview, is not just a disaster in hindsight. The result was obvious in foresight: "The overwhelming preponderance of the best evidence available made it abundantly clear that it was likely to be the worst strategic mistake in our nation's history."
If that's true, shouldn't Democrats nominate someone in 2008 who shared his judgment about the perils of war back in 2002? "I hope we will," he responded.
The logic of that comment seemed inescapable. Democrats should not nominate someone like Hillary Rodham Clinton, who backed President Bush in authorizing the Iraq invasion and has never recanted the vote.
No, no, Gore demurred, that's not what he meant. Then he retreated to the safer ground of his new book, "The Assault on Reason," a sermon on Bush’s hubris and the decline of public discourse. "I would hope that whoever becomes the nominee in both parties would recognize that American democracy is in trouble," he said. "We need more than just 30-second ads. We need more than nostrums and bromides and palliatives and these buzz words that are poll-tested."
One reason to take the former vice president at his word that he does not expect to again be a candidate for national office — as he was for four consecutive elections from 1988 to 2000 — is that he is more comfortable as preacher and professor than he was as politician.
Over the course of a 30-minute conversation, Gore traversed the war, climate change and the evolution of modern media (his own voracious media appetite, he said, ranges from The New York Times to Daily Kos and the Drudge Report). When the inevitable question came — his intentions about 2008 — he said politics "rewards a tolerance for artifice, repetition, triviality that I don't have in as great supply as I might have had when I was younger."
Democrats plainly like the current incarnation of Al Gore.
That was evident minutes after the Tuesday night interview, when he received a roaring ovation from a full house at George Washington University's Lisner Auditorium, where the popular Washington bookstore Politics & Prose was hosting a lecture and signing for "The Assault on Reason."
But if Gore is more intriguing and more sympathetic to many liberals than he was in 2000, that may in part be because he remains tantalizingly out of reach. Gore is most fluent when the conversation is most abstract. When it comes to particulars of contemporary politics — the push and shove of daily news — he turns vague and muddy.
At another point in the interview, it sounded at first like he was brushing back the liberal activists in his own party. They have lashed Democratic congressional leaders for last week’s retreat in their confrontation with Bush over continued funding for the war.
Even war opponents, Gore said, have a "moral obligation to see the complexity of the dilemma our country is in," trying to bring troops home while not leaving Iraq in even more dangerous turmoil. "So pursuing those twin objectives is not easy under any circumstances, but it's not an act of cowardice or a lack of will on the part of Democrats in the Congress who see the complexity of this dilemma," Gore argued.
"And so when they don't have the votes to override the president's veto, they have to do the best they can to frame new options. ... I would urge Democrats who want our troops out yesterday to show some understanding of the difficult hand the Democratic leaders have to play and give them the benefit of the doubt in expecting that they are going to continue to push the mandate they received from the voters last fall to change the course of this war."
Was that comment aimed at MoveOn.org and other groups, which have threatened primary challenges to Democrats who do not challenge Bush on the war? Not at all, Gore said again: "I was really directing it at people like me who want to see our troops out immediately but understand that it's not that easy."
Gore's refusal to be pinned down can be frustrating. But he is fun to talk to — at least I have always thought so. We have known each other — not intimately, but cordially — since the 1990s, when I covered the Clinton White House. In occasional off-the-record sessions during official travel, Gore was more at ease talking with reporters, and far more knowledgeable about the personalities and customs of the news business, than Bill Clinton was. He never seemed "stiff" on these occasions. He was entertaining and informative. Against this backdrop, the mutual mistrust, even contempt, which later marked his press relations during the 2000 campaign was something of a puzzle.
Gore sympathizers, in liberal blogs especially, believe that the national media were accomplices with Republican operatives in causing Gore to lose control of his public image. As I've written previously, Gore's opponents successfully took personality tics — a penchant for overstatement, for example — and misleadingly portrayed them as basic character defects (such as the allegation that he was a serial fabricator about his own record). I asked Gore Tuesday what he made of the argument that his candidacy was victimized by false narratives that took root in the news media.
He feigned a look of shock and revelation. "How do you possibly think that?" he teased. "I'm just fascinated by what you're saying. I'll have to reflect on it.”
But he said his personal experience is not what drives his view that modern political-media culture — dominated by commercial television spots and tabloid news sensations — allows falsehoods to flourish. Still, he is plainly fascinated by the structural changes taking place in the news business because of the Web. Before and after the interview, he had several questions and observations about Politico, which was started by reporters who left established print publications. In turn, I was curious about his own Web habits.
He said he has a Google news page and regularly reads about two dozen sites that range from traditional outlets like USA Today as well as new media venues like Slashdot.org, a technology site, and Huffington Post. Of the Drudge Report, which targeted Bill Clinton's sex scandals and draws fire from liberal media critics, Gore said he occasionally clicks on it. "I do. I do go to Drudge from time to time."
He said he does not agree with media critics who believe that the Web has created an echo chamber, in which ideologues repeat arguments to people who agree with them but do not reach or persuade people in the center. He said he likes the Web because of the ease it offers in finding dissenting views. "When I go to a site that I know is more likely than not to agree with my point of view," he said, "I will quite often go laterally to the opposite side of the court to see what's being said."
He warmed to a question from a Politico.com reader who wondered about his praise for the Daily Show and asked whether traditional news can really be "fair and balanced." Gore said it can and should. But he added that he watches mock newsmen Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert as often as he can. "What I do think is interesting is that some of the comedy news programs are so frequently more successful than the established news programs in presenting some of the more provocative — dare I say inconvenient — truths that emerge from the daily narrative of American democracy," he said. "Just as the court jester was sometimes the only truth sayer who could avoid having his head off in medieval feudal courts, a similar phenomenon appears to have emerged in our culture."
Gore these days sounds more like a social commentator than a politician, and he says that is not an accident. From a liberal perspective, Gore has been prescient on large questions — global warming, the role of technology and the Iraq war — but he said it does not necessarily follow from that that he should seek the presidency.
"I think there are a lot of things about politics as it has evolved that I'm not really that good at," he said. "Some people find out earlier in their lives that they're not good at what they've chosen to do." He interjected a self-deprecating laugh. Then he turned serious again. "And I'm not being falsely humble. I think there are some things I do quite well. ... There are a lot of things about the political system that I don't enjoy, and I think those are mostly the same things that I don't think I'm necessarily good at."
That sounds plausible. For the first 25 years of his public career, Gore was a restless and unconventional mind disguised by one of the most painfully conventional public images in politics. It is too late in this election cycle — and perhaps in any future one — for Gore to run a conventional campaign. The media advisers and fundraisers and strategists have all moved on to others.
But Gore finished the conversation with the hint — not stated, just implied — that he still might be tempted by the prospect of an unconventional campaign, one that uses the Web and ideas to create a new political order.
"The solutions to what ails American democracy will take some time and will have to come from a broad engagement by people who do use the new opportunities and tools that are becoming available," he said.
"And I think that out of that evolutionary process there may emerge opportunities for new kinds of candidates in both parties."
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