Six years after failing to become president, Al Gore has been reborn as a winning campaigner. charles laurence reports |
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We've never felt this way about Al Gore before. The man who couldn't win the White House however good the odds, who could never even get the handshake right, is suddenly coming across like a jolly good fellow.
His loss to George Bush six years ago was the ultimate humiliation because it is obvious to this day that Bill Clinton, his boss for two terms as vice-president, would have walked it, and never mind the Monica scandal. 2000 was Gore's to lose, and he lost it.
But now a new Al Gore stalks the land, flying commercial and hauling his own carry-on bag behind him, and he cuts a dashing figure of resolution, gravitas, heart and even humour. Humour? Al Gore?
The transformation comes at the hands of
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| If there is one pulpit that is more powerful than the Oval Office, it is the multiplex |
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Hollywood. The former Veep is the star, indeed the whole story, of An Inconvenient Truth, a blockbuster big-screen documentary devoted to ringing alarm bells over global warming and spelling out the science with convincing clarity.
"Well, it was a hard blow," says Gore in cinematic close-up following old news footage of the row over ballots that eventually ended with the Supreme Court handing Bush the victory.
Gore grew a beard and sulked for a few months. Then he wrote a book, and went on the road with a projector.
"What can you do? You make the most of it, and I started giving the slide show again."
The graphics are zippy - Gore would certainly make a first-class school teacher - and with celebrity pay rates he makes a pretty good living. Gore has given his lecture "live" more than 1,000 times, from Tokyo to Tennessee.
There is nothing like well-shot film to frame a message, and if there is one pulpit that is more powerful than the Oval Office, it is 
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