David Remnick is one of my favorite New Yorker writers, probably because he makes reading feel like eating half a candy bar: delicious, just what you craved, yet you’re always left wanting more.He has a delightful commentary on the chances of Al Gore stepping into the presidential ring in this week’s issue. Here’s a juicy excerpt."Gore’s reluctance is understandable. The balloting in Iowa and New Hampshire is nearly a year away. He is in no rush. He may have shared Bill Clinton’s love of policymaking but not his relish for full-immersion politicking. In the view of former aides still close to him, Gore can’t lose by staying on the electoral sidelines. While Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama start competing––warily at first, and then, inevitably, taking direct aim at one another’s weaknesses––Gore can stand unbruised, nursing the lingering glamour of his popular margin in 2000 and, perhaps, demanding by quiet inference that we take stock of a distinguished public career that began three decades ago, when Gore was a twenty-eight-year-old Vietnam veteran freshly elected to Congress.“If only to take an honest man’s word for it, Gore’s entry into the race is unlikely. Clinton, Obama, Bill Richardson, John Edwards, Joseph Biden, Christopher Dodd—the field already provides a pool of talent and a range of possibilities infinitely more encouraging than the status quo. Moreover, the nomination and election of any one of the first three would take America a long way toward keeping the unfulfilled promise of “We the people”—not least because the appeal of all three is based only incidentally upon gender, race, or ethnic heritage."
Remnick On Gore
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