Al Gore, the stoic, unflappable United States Vice President during the Clinton Administration, has reinvented himself. And how. After losing a controversial presidential election in 2000 by a whisper and literally caved in to the shenanigans of the Republican Party goon squads in Florida and the rabblerousing on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox 5 TV station, Gore delved into the issue of climate change and became one of the best and most influential “friends of the earth” after leaving the White House.
That journey, that many in the Republican Party and the amen chorus, “yes men,” within the Bush Administration scoffed at and made fun of has paid huge dividends for Al Gore when he was recently named the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner for his environmental work becoming the second individual environmentalist in the Prize’s history to win this prestigious award.
And the Nobel Peace Prize he won was a political body-blow to U.S. President George W. Bush and the GOP and will boost the Democratic Party’s chances of winning the presidency in 2008. Gore also becomes the second high-ranking Democrat to with the Nobel Prize under watch of the Bush Administration – the first being former US President Jimmy Carter in 2002 who won the prize for his efforts to foster world peace.
Gore must be inwardly punching the air and laughing since he must know that this win makes environmentalists around the world look at the Democratic Party and its bevy of candidates in a very different positive way. Internally, “earth-friendly” minor political parties and groups in the United States that have remained kind of uncertain of where to go in the 2008 Presidential elections will most certainly be thinking of giving the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee – whoever he or she is – their support.
That has all to do with Al Gore’s coronation as the protector of the earth and his championing the cause of wilderness conservation, raising awareness to global warming and advocating progressive ways to limit green house gases. Gore’s campaigning against the threat of global warming while President Bush and the GOP continue to hem and haw, fidget and send confusing signals make him and the Democrats look as the environmental knights in shining armor.
For the 2008 US Presidential Elections this is an enormous political windfall for the Democrats many of whom now wish Al Gore would run for the presidency. He’s steadfastly played the aloof elder statesman and cunningly remained above the political fray consistently saying that he’s not interested in the presidency. While he’s been working to save the planet President George Bush and engaged in a process of environmental slipping and sliding and has thumbed his nose at things concerning the environment only making inaudible guttural sounds about his “commitment” to do his part to cut back on green house gases.
"The Nobel Committee's recognition of Vice President Gore shines a bright light on the most inconvenient truth of all -- the selection of George Bush as president has endangered the peace and prosperity of the entire planet," said fellow Democrat John Edwards, a 2008 White House contender.
Gore has now attained international rock star status alongside his former boss and fellow Democrat Bill Clinton. The Nobel Prize may be for him some measure of vindication given the fact that in the controversial 2000 Presidential Elections that the US Supreme Court ultimately handed to King George he “lost” the Florida vote recount but won the national popular voter for president.
But unlike other vice president’s Gore did not simply ride into the sunset and disappear from the American political scene. He continued his international advocacy on the environment and won and Oscar this year for his documentary film “an Inconvenient Truth” that revealed him as a tireless environmental campaigner and a reliable and honest “friend of the earth.”
Whichever Democratic Presidential contender can smear himself or herself with the environment mud, as a manner of speaking, and win the support of Al Gore will, in my view, win the Democratic Party’s domination and the US presidency in the process. Gore’s stature within the Democratic Party has risen sharply and he’s no longer just a former vice president. He comes to the party’s nomination convention as an internationally recognized environmentalist with near rock star appeal and the holder of one of the world’s most important and prestigious awards.
Gore’s Nobel Prize also helps to paint Republicans and in particular, President King George II, as a bunch of hypocrites who hate the earth and don’t care about preserving it for future generations. That has negative political undertones for the GOP’s candidates who have hitched their stars to King George’s “war on terror” and other domestically and internationally unpopular issues. The 43rd President of the United States has become an embarrassment to his party and the rest of America for his fumbling and bumbling.
As Gore’s stature grew both in America and around the world King George became one of the world’s most hated men because of his smug arrogance and glaring political double-standards in dealing with international affairs around the world. At home, the Democratic Party of the Bill Clinton days was rehabilitated and invigorated by a succession of Bush Administration scandals that made Bill Clinton’s sexual imbroglios look as the stuff of a stolen Sunday school smooch.
While the Democrats basked in Bush’s quagmire Gore offered periodical criticisms of the Administration in carefully timed releases that helped to shape the Democratic Party as a viable alternative, at least in the eyes of the public, to the incompetence and power drunkenness of the Republican Party, King George and his Merry Men, especially duck-hunting Prince Dick of Head. As domestic and international opposition to the Iraq War mounted and King George with head in the clouds pledged to “stay the course” insisting that “we’re winning in Iraq” and the war on terror the reality at home was less flattering.
Military misadventure followed political mistakes followed avoidable flubs followed failures followed scandals and denials by King George and Company. Social Security reform, Harriet Miers as Supreme Court nominee, the Dubai Ports World debacle, the dirty tricks of Karl Rove, the outing of former CIA agent Valerie Palme, the trial and pardoning of Vice President Dick Cheney’s trusted aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the firing of US Attorneys and the warrantless surveillance program starring former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as the goon willing to pressure a sick former US Attorney John Ashcroft in hospital and finally the picking of “political generals” who tell King George what he wants to hear all point to a party and Administration in total disarray, political denial and consistently shooting itself in the foot.
And yes, where the hell are those weapons of mass destruction that King George and his gutless, shameless, lame-brained “Merry Men,” led by Colin Powell in his despicable and hilarious United Nations case-for-war address, told the world that Iraq had and was used as the basis to launch a pre-emptive, unprovoked imperial oil-grabbing war? By any and all United States Constitutional standards this rises to the litmus test for impeachment of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” But while Al Gore has single-handedly given the Democrats the upper hand in the 2008 Presidential contest they are yet to show some guts by raising the issue of presidential impeachment.
Former US President Bill Clinton was dragged unceremoniously through the mud by a vindictive and arrogant Republican Party for getting a blow job. He did not lie to the American people about a manufactured war threat and sent over 3,000 Americans to die in Iraq in a war that has also seen over 25,000 US servicemen and women wounded. He did not cause by his military actions the deaths of approximately 1.5 million Iraqis and the displacement of over 4 million – 2 million internally displaced inside Iraq (2007 figures). He only succumbed to the charms of the buxom Monica and his raunchy Billy Goat urges – that’s no crime in my book.
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