Al Gore wins Nobel; good to go for US presidency

Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Friday for their efforts to spread awareness of man-made climate change and lay the foundations for counteracting it, according to an Associated Press report.

Meanwhile people claiming to be grass-roots Democrats plan to draft Gore to contest the Democratic nomination and eventually the US presidency. They have asked sympathizers to sign a petition to Al Gore on their web site called draftgore.com.

Going by his track record on Iraq and his leadership stand on environment issues, Al Gore may in fact give America a chance to play a leadership role worldwide, a leadership built on civic initiatives, rather than on the power of arms, that the country has been associated with under President George Bush.

In my opinion Al Gore has some advantages. One he is not a Clinton nor a Bush. If Gore gets elected as president of the US, it will prove that the country is not short of leaders outside the Bush and Clinton dynasties.

Gore may also help make the world a safer place.

Hillary Clinton voted authorizing the war in Iraq, and has now back-tracked with the naïve line that she didn’t know George Bush would mess it up. In contrast, Gore has criticized the invasion of Iraq as way back as 2002. On consistency he scores over Clinton, but he is on par with Barack Obama.

Gore however breaks from the pack of Presidential wannabes as he comes across as a man with a vision. His commitment to environment issues, and his active participation in a variety of forums on other serious issues like the role of the Internet, makes Gore clearly statesman material, unlike the rest who have yet to articulate a vision of what they stand for politically, socially, and on the environmental front.

Al Gore has so far shown no interest in running again for the Presidency. From his current position as a statesman, he would be getting into the rough and tumble of daily administration, bipartisan politics, and other challenges, including extricating the country out of Iraq and maybe Iran if Bush has already got there by January, 2009. His election is also by no means a foregone conclusion with Hillary Clinton once again aiming for the White House. She has raised cash and set up a campaign organization, that Gore may find tough, though not impossible to match at this point.

But if he changes his mind, he can perhaps help make the world both a safer and cleaner place.

Related Article:

Alas, yet another Clinton presidency