The New Republic

Al Gore may have given one of the finest speeches of his
career.  It had poetic resonance but was rooted
in real science.  It was politically
visionary but was animated by an, alas, secure sense of climatic disaster.  It was quite plain-spoken about the economic realities
that made global warming so ordinary but argued the hope that suicidal habits
were good for no one, not even the greatest suicidalists, China and, most
significantly, the United States.  It is my
view -but maybe not Al's- that in the end, however, America
will be more persuadable than "Peoples' China," whose impetus for
domination knows no bounds and courts all kinds of travesties.  Your papers will have some of the Gore
text.  Please read it--you can do so here.

I was wrong in assuming that King Harald V himself would
bestow the Nobel honor on the laureate. 
He sat facing the podium with the Queen and their son and
daughter-in-law at his side, separated by a few feet from of the crowd.  When His Majesty went up to congratulate the
Nobels (there were two, the other being the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, a U.N. contraption, represented at the Oslo ceremony by Rajendra
Pachauri) and the members of the Norwegian parliament who had made the choices,
there was no bowing or curtsying.  The
only special feature to the royals' arriving and leaving was the sounding of
trumpets in resonant flourish.  So,
otherwise, this is a rather plain monarchy, and its plainness may give it its
stability. (Frederik, the Crown Prince of Denmark who came to study at Harvard,
once told me that shortly before he left for Cambridge his mother, Queen
Margarethe II, had warned him against pulling any pranks and calling attention
to himself, generally: "We are not as strong as the House of
Windsor."  But he did ride a
motorcycle around Cambridge.  Unlike the awkward Prince of Wales, Frederik
was both very smart and very funny.  The
royal houses of both Norway
and Denmark
were and remain extremely popular, not least for their leading participation in
the resistance against the Nazis.)

Anyway, this is not about the royal family but about Gore
who seems to have touched the Europeans -I've seen him elsewhere in Europe- like no one since Dwight Eisenhower and, perhaps,
further back to FDR.  Recall, after all,
that the Norwegians are not very demonstrative with their feelings.  In fact, they are quite restrained.  And the sun comes up late and goes down
early, a real bummer, which is ordinarily dealt with by liquor.  Yet a constant crowd has been waiting eagerly
outside the Hotel Grand (actually not so grand) since I arrived on Sunday. I spoke with some in this crowd -everybody
speaks English, really everybody--and one tall blond woman, young, extremely
articulate and beautiful, an obvious descendant from the Vikings, answered my
query about why she was spending Monday afternoon waiting for a peek at the
former Vice President of the U.S.  Here's
exactly what she said: "You see, when the Supreme Court overruled the Florida court, you had what we are now experiencing in Europe:
Brussels overruling the individual nations of Europe.  It was robbery,
a theft of democracy."  It was not
exactly the answer I expected.  She is no
groupie, not at all.

Precisely now, as I write, there is a procession that has
arrived outside the hotel, made up mostly of young people carrying torches and some
with placards proclaiming "Stop Global Warming."  Al is at this moment making an appearance on
a hotel balcony, and assembled drums have gone into a frenetic beat.  The Nobel Laureate, the almost president of
the United States,
surely has noticed that there are many signs simply saying, "Thank
you."

There are also four men carrying "Ron Paul for
President" signs. Doesn't this lonely quad grasp that Paul is not running
for office in Norway and that the Norwegian billionaire ship builders and other
profiteers from the North Sea prosperity have escaped socialist-style taxes and
are now living in London, dubbed "non-domiciled," which is precisely
what they are not and which is what makes their capital gains tax-exempt?

It is odd that they showed up for Gore, who, it still seems, will not be running for President. I asked him about his meeting with George Bush
last week.  He smiled but said
nothing.  But here's something
tantalizing he said almost off-hand towards the end of his speech:
"Political will is a renewable resource."  Was it a signal?  Probably not. 
But it could be.

Maybe Gore should run in Florida
and Michigan, large and representative states
(not like the circus caucuses that is the Democratic Party in Iowa), that are cross-section
jurisdictions.  Florida,
after all, is the fourth or fifth most populous state in the Union.  Michigan
actually has mixed-population cities. 
The Democratic National Committee has vacuumed them out of the political
system: if you run your primaries before Iowa
and New Hampshire
you won't have delegates.

Well, imagine the

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