Wednesday night, Al Gore came to Portland for a two day stay. The big event was his book tour and lecture at Keller Auditorium (just a five minute walk from my apartment). I was on the fence about going, because the cheapest tickets were $45, which was a bit pricey for me...but on the plus side, the price includes a copy of his new book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis. So, I decided to "splurge" if tickets were still available the day of the event. I'll consider it an early Christmas gift to myself.In October 2006, Gore brought his An Inconvenient Truth "slideshow" presentation to the Rose Colosseum, which I was quite excited to see. I had already seen his documentary in theaters twice, but it was even better in person. Well, he pretty much presented everything the same way as he did in the documentary, so that was kind of surreal to watch (there were only a few differences that I could tell, but it was pretty exact in what he said, how he said it, and the order of the information). What made the event truly worth paying the price for was that he had a question and answer session afterwards. I remember one young man stating that he had created an online petition for people to add their names to if they want Gore to run for president in 2008. He told Gore that if he could get a million people to sign the petition, would Gore consider running? Gore, of course, thanked the young man for his kind words but indicated that he considered himself to be a "recovering politician" and couldn't foresee a future run.
Here we are three years later. Amazing how things changed. True to his word, Gore did not jump into the Democratic candidate pool once the new year began in January 2007. I knew that he wouldn't, mostly because by nature, Gore is loyal (out of all the politicians I've read about, Gore has the most similar personality as me, thus why I view him as a great role model for me as well as feel the most defensive whenever people criticize him for his personality). Like most people, Gore probably knew Hillary was planning to run in 2008 and the conventional wisdom was that she would be the Democratic nominee. Gore did not want to stand in her way. Had Gore run, though, I believe he would have won the Democratic primary and selected Obama as his running mate and won the election. Our country might even be better for it, as it would give Obama a great training ground for the presidency. Instead, we have an inexperienced president who has to clean up a huge mess and a rabid right seeking to bring his presidency down (though Gore most likely would have inspired the same right-wing outrages because they can't accept any Democrat as president).
I was actually relieved that Gore decided not to run again. He re-found his passion and is doing something vitally important for our planet. He is a true visionary leader and a global statesman (on par with Mikhail Gorbachev and Nelson Mandela). By stepping aside of national politics, he allowed the Democrats to have a historical and exciting primary season (I doubt we'll ever see an election as great and emotional and unprecedented as 2008) and we now have a young and energetic president who inspires people around the world.
As I watched the lecture, I couldn't help reflecting how different I feel now than I did in 2006. There was still some lingering pain over the 2000 election when I heard him speak during 2006's An Inconvenient Truth lecture tour. Now, I no longer felt it. We simply would not have a President Barack Obama without a President George W. Bush. Not that I will ever believe that Bush was the legitimate winner of 2000, but now that his administration is no longer part of our present, I'd just as soon bury Bushism in the past and focus on the future. Gore is probably glad that he won't have to clean up Bush's mess. He is doing what he most loves and it shows!
I waited outside Keller Auditorium until they let people inside. It was a crazy carnival atmosphere. Across the street from Keller Auditorium is a cool waterfall fountain that is a very popular place during the summer months (people are allowed to jump into fountains in Portland). On the upper level, there is also a park. In honour of Gore's lecture, a group of teabaggers were holding a "protest." A band was playing "patriotic" songs. The guy with the loudspeaker admitted that he was a paid operative of a group called Americans For Prosperity, which is a corporate lobbyist astroturf organization. He admitted that the teabaggers were from the Puget Sound (Portland's way too liberal for any teabaggers to feel comfortable in. Awhile back, even Fred "God Hates Fags" Phelps brought his bigoted church group to Portland for a protest and failed to find an audience to agitate). The AFP guy said that he had the honour of meeting Rush Limbaugh and some other stupid comments. It was all "God", "freedom", "no taxes", and "the troops." I get the impression that those words are designed specifically to rally the faithful like Pavlov's dogs.
Other groups were protesting in favour of Gore. These included a group of environmentalists and sustainability groups. Even PETA showed up, in which one young lady dressed as Mother Earth and held a sign that inexplicably claimed "Gore loves meat more than me." I couldn't figure out the movtivations of one group of people that chanted as they marched: "What do we want? Global warming! When do we want it? Now!" They also had signs that said "$10 is too much" and other weird things. The paper mentioned that this group was actually making fun of the AFP and teabaggers, kind of like the Billionaires For Bush group that was seen at anti-war rallies.
At 6:30, I was glad to get inside, away from the crazies, get my copy of Gore's book and find my seat on the balcony level. It was a packed audience, though there were still some empty seats left in the upper balconies. I had an hour to kill, so I started reading the book. I couldn't help but think of Rush Limbaugh's gushing endorsement of Palin's book as "the best public policy book" he's ever read. Yeah, right. If Rush really wants to read a "public policy book", how about Gore's Our Choice? It is 415 pages (to Palin's 413) with double columns on the page and packed full of all kinds of environmental information. Its a very wonky book. That's what a real public policy book looks like, not Palin's petty, backbiting and score settling dish rag.
In Gore's introduction pages, he even mentioned the willful ignorance of certain people who ignore all the facts and documents that verify that Obama was born in the U.S. in favour of a forged birth certificate produced by a conspiracy theorist. His 2007 book The Assault on Reason covers in great detail the problem with modern politics when ignorant people mistake their uninformed opinions for being equal to the opinions of those who study politics in depth and made a career in the public realm. That's the problem with teabaggers. They mistake an uninformed opinion for the truth. Maybe it reflects our "reality show era" in which average Americans become instant celebrities because of a show created around their personalities. Sarah Palin is the natural outgrowth of this kind of aberration: when politics goes rogue.
For this lecture, Gore just spoke on the stage...entirely without notes. For ninety minutes. No slideshows, no illustrations on an overhead projection. Just Gore in professor mode. After 1992's Earth in the Balance and 2006's An Inconvenient Truth, I was actually shocked when I walked into Powells a few weeks ago and saw that Gore had a new book out. I didn't buy it then because of the advertisement of the upcoming Gore lecture that included a copy of his book with the ticket. What more could he say about the environment, I thought.Near the end of his lecture, ushers collected slips of paper that was included in our programs to write down questions for Gore. It didn't take long for the question and answer session to begin, but disappointingly, only five questions got asked. I didn't turn in a slip of paper because I figured with that many people in the auditorium, someone would think to ask an interesting question and the chances of my question being asked was slim. The only question I remember was about Gore's personal influences in getting him interested in environmentalism. He said that it was growing up on the farm and learning about soil erosion from his father, and then having a mother who read a book to him at the dinner table when he was about 12 (the book is called Silent Spring, considered a classic among environmentalists). The third influence was a professor at Harvard who studied the effect of carbon on our environment and whose lectures captivated the young Gore.
On Thursday morning, I volunteered to help the Bill Bradbury for Governor campaign. Gore was attending a special fundraising event on behalf of Bradbury. Tickets were $25 or $40 at the door. $1,000 bought a special reception with Gore before the event, in which VIPs get to meet with him. I had emailed about attending the reception before I knew the cost. Of course, I mentioned my being a former intern of Gore, hoping that might get me in the door, but nope. Dang. Mentioning my internship helped get me VIP seating at a Bill Clinton event in 2008 when he spoke at the school my brother is a custodian at.
Bradbury also mentioned his being diagnosed with MS back in 1980 or so, and how that has not defeated him. He has managed it well over the years (through physical therapy and acupuncture) and it hasn't prevented him from serving in the state legislature or the Secretary of State office for the past eight years. He uses a Segway to get around these days.
The above photo is Gore in his office at home in Nashville. When I saw that photo, my reaction was, "oh...he's one of those!" At work, our accountant guy retired recently. In the three years I worked there, I had never seen this guy's desk because it was buried under piles of paper.













