-By Warner Todd Huston
I have to admit it. I am jealous of former Vice President Al Gore. I want what he’s got, at least in a generalized way.
It isn’t that I envy him for having been vice president. The number two spot has traditionally been one not well regarded and only a few VPs have made the position an important one, if only in a fleeting way. Thomas Jefferson did some excellent work fashioning the procedure of the Senate while he was the veep, Nixon became an important part of Ike’s foreign policy team, and Dick Cheney became, well, Dick Cheney! But Al Gore was not in that class. He, like most other vps, was a seat warmer without much of import to his stint in the junior chair.
The office has been chided as “not worth a warm bucket of spit” (though I am fairly certain VP Garner said the “s” word and not spit), been called “the most insignificant office ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived” by John Adams, and at least one occupant of the office spawned such trenchant bits of philosophy as, “what this nation needs is a good 5-cent cigar.” (That last bit of philosophical legerdemain uttered by vp Thomas Marshal. In other words, the office has not been very consequential on its own merits.)
So, it isn’t Al’s rather pointless stint as VP that I admire. No it’s his almost universal acceptance as a man of great expertise because he once narrated a movie script. Not unlike how so many graying old TV news readers have been hailed as men of substance because they can read aloud with conviction, Al Gore has been hailed around the world because he can read and talk at the same time.
Brilliant!
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Why This Conservative Wants To Be Like Al Gore”