An Oscar, now a Nobel - Why Al Gore should be US President

I have been enjoying seasons of the west wing of late, and it's been interesting getting to see how an idealistic American government should work. And it's with this new found interest I find myself writing this article.

Al Gore was Bill Clintons vice-President, and when Clinton's term ended, Gore joined the race to be the next US President, along with George W. Bush in 2000. He subsequently lost that election in the most bizarre fashion. He actually secured more than half a million public votes than President Bush, but it's electoral votes (like seats in parliament) that wins elections, and Bush received 4 more than Gore. It was the closest race in history, decided by a margin of just 537 votes in Florida (out of a possible 300 million!), which causeed further contraversy. Gore was initally declared winner, then Bush, then the case was taken to the Supreme Court to decide, and as we know it today - George Bush took the presidency.

Al Gore was the president that should be. He was branded boring by a lot of people, but this can not be further from the truth. Amongst other things - he passed a bill in 1979 that inevitably brought the expansion of the internet. With Clinton, they forged the best days the American economy had ever seen. He has made donations to the poor, he has one an oscar for his documentary film on climate change called 'An Inconvenient Truth' and he has won a Nobel Prize also for his work on climate change. He is only the second person ever to win an Oscar and a Nobel

Ok, so given all that, still why should Al gore be president? Well set aside his obvious experience, we are living in a day and age were we need to start thinking about the generations after us, and looking after our planet before it is too late. The G8 have brought out plans to cut carbon emissions over a certain period, but so far America under Bush have said no. Given that the US is the worlds largest supplier of greenhouse gas this has to change, and Gore will be the man to do it. He has the moral obligation to do it, and it's time for a moral leader of the western world.

Problems - he has today said that he so far has no plans to run for the 2008 US Presidency, but then again being president and with the way American politics works, he would only end up having to give compromise after compromise with the things he believes in. A newspaper article put it 'His cause is a higher one, the unwilling hero implies, that is better served by the public advocacy his celebrity makes possible, than by political office with its constraints and inevitable compromises'. So for now, I guess we will probably have to make do with Hilary Clinton! I leave it with a quote from Gore himself

"The range of things we're talking about now will come to seem so small. "This [climate change] is not a political issue but a moral and spiritual challenge."