A Redemption Story

Or is it perseverance? As my former colleague Rick Wayne describes in his blog, Al Gore winning the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday morning is such a proof of quality. Here is a man who lost the presidential election through a technicality but respected the structure of our democracy so much that he conceded defeat. (This position may be eroding, but as the founders of modern democracy Americans are an example. In many countries, you need only see the frequently rewritten constitutions, recent conversions from dictatorships and military coups that abound and you have an even greater admiration for our relative stability and near pathological respect for law.)

Winning the Peace Prize (and the Academy Award) shows Al Gore's focus was never on power, it was on progress. Instead of beating an introspective retreat, he took a circuitous route, defined by tireless work, to changing the world's environmental agenda. If you've ever been to a professional conference and seen a million dull PowerPoint slide presentations, you know that An Inconvenient Truth was the best talk ever given. Last night I began to argue that the talk itself was an example of how Gore had applied his money and position to designing the most effective dialectic possible, and my husband pointed out that power had nothing to do with it--imagine if "their guy" (as Rick put it) had put together a presentation. Actually, don't bother imagining it, it's too depressing.