Is David Cameron about to become the British Al Gore?

Remember the outcry when Al Gore was cheated of the US Presidency in 2000 by Bush? Remember how, throughout Bush's terrible presidency, Gore was presented as the innocent victim of an act of political theft? Well, if Labour and the Liberal Democrats do a deal and force yet another unelected Prime Minister on the country, then David Cameron will become the British equivalent of Al Gore.

Think about it. Cameron won the most votes in the election of any party, and it is only a quirk of the electoral system that prevents him from being named as Prime Minister - just as the electoral college system prevented President Gore in 2000. Sure, had the recount not been stopped, then Gore might have won - but what stopped the recount? A combination of politicians hostile to the election's biggest vote-winner making deals behind closed doors - just as Labour and the Liberal Democrats are doing at the moment. If Cameron is prevented from forming a government, he and his supporters will be an excellent and credible position to play the martyr. And if a deal is struck between the Liberal Democrats and Labour, then the ensuing government will be forever compromised, just as the first Bush administration was. The Lib-Lab coalition will be handing both the opposition and democrats throughout the country a massive stick with which to whack them.

Why's Gordo Agreed to Televised Debates?

So, it appears we will be having TV debates between the party leaders at the next General Election. Although there is potentially a lot of time between now and then, and therefore don't be too surprised if Browns bottles the TV debates. After all, he has a lot of history of ducking any sort of a contest that might make him look bad.

But this announcement does beg the question of what Brown is thinking by agreeing to the debates. I reckon it could be one of two things - either he is desperate, or he is going to play the expectations game like a madman.

The latter option would the logical one. After all, Bush Junior played the expectation game superbly in the lead up to his first debate with Al Gore. Team Bush played down expectations so much that all Bush Junior had to do in order not to lose was avoid defecating on his podium. Brown could do the same. He could send out his evil flying monkeys to spread the word amongst the media that Brown is terrified of debating Cameron and almost certain to lose the debates. Given Brown has showed himself to be utterly incapable week after week at Prime Minister's Questions, this idea could gain some traction. And then all Brown would have to in the debate would be not to burst into tears and start sucking his thumb in order to be perceived to have done well.

Of course, downplaying expectations involves telling people in the media, and therefore in the country, that Gordon Brown isn't great at something. And that would dent the stupid man's ego. So whilst playing the expectation game is the logical thing for Brown and his posse to do, I suspect that the brittle arrogance of the Prime Minister will prevent them from actually doing it.

So it is the former. I suspect what Team Brown are doing is surrendering to desperation. Quite simply, the logic behind their agreement is that they now have nothing to lose. Labour seems to have bottomed out in the polls. They've reached their current base level of support. If Brown does badly, it isn't going to dent the limited support they have left. If he does well, he might gain a few points in the opinion polls and minimise the electoral defeat facing the Labour party at the General Election. Blair didn't agree to debate because he was in a position of strength - and there was always the risk that if he did debate, then he could lose popularity. However, Brown has been such a colossal failure as Prime Minister that he has reached a point where he cannot get any more unpopular, realistically. He's doing the debate because it can't make things any worse for him. He literally has nothing to lose, even if he attends the debates and does nothing other than mutter and look sulky.

Oh, if the SNP are going to get all pissy about not been included in the debates, then I think it is an outrage that the leader of the Libertarian Party hasn't been invited to participate either. Not just because all parties deserve a say, but also because I think it would be hilarious to have the Devil himself in a room with Gordon Brown, David Cameron and that fella what runs the Lib Dems...

Nader for President! (Not Really)

Ralph Nader is running for President again. If you can call winning a few nods from seriously disaffected lefties in the US "running for President." I mean, let’s face it, Nader has exactly the same chance of becoming President as me – the square root of fuck all.

No doubt there will be considerable bleating from Democrats in the US that Nader is a spoiler – someone who is going to take votes from the Democrats and help to create another four years of Republican rule in the White House. And Nader probably will take some votes from the Democrats on the left this time out. He arguably did cost Al Gore the White House in 2000. But is that his fault?

Is it shite. The 2000 Presidential election should never have been close enough for the few votes that Nader generates to have any impact on the overall result. Gore – an articulate, experienced Vice-President should have kicked the bony, idiotic, fundamentalist arse of George W right across the US. Especially when stories about drink driving came out. Likewise, in 2004, Kerry should have smashed the living crap out of an unpopular President fighting an unpopular war. It was not Nader who cost the Democrats victory in both ’00 and ’04. It was the stunning incompetence of the Democratic candidates.

The same applies to this contest. After 8 years of Bush misrule, the Democrats should cruise to victory. As Nader himself notes (as quoted in the Telegraph):

Making his announcement on NBC's Meet the Press, he said if the Democrats could not win this year by a "landslide", despite his involvement, then "they should just close down".

Quite.

Of course, that does rather beg the question of why Nader is running for the presidency. But honestly, who will notice another wanker in this campaign chock full of wankers?

A New Religion

Last night I watched An Inconvenient Truth*. Any regular readers will know I am a little cynical about global warming and the environmental movement, but I wanted to watch Gore's film to see if he could persuade me. After all, he was the Vice-President of the most prosperous and one of the most advanced countries in the world, so surely he would have access to a lot of research and a lot of information that I, working as an HR bod in Central London, just don't have.

Let's just say he didn't win me over. Sure, there were lots of graphs showing dramatic increases in, what I shall scientifically call, "stuff", but he failed to explain exactly what his graphs and pictures meant or exactly what his timescales were. And at the risk of being an intellectual snob, a truly good researcher does not cite his or her sources as "my friend". And the moments when Gore got really passionate were the moments when he was talking not about the environment, but rather himself. There may well be a case out there, somewhere, that will convince me about global warming, and the threat it poses to us all. But it most certainly wasn't An Inconvenient Truth.

But it did get me thinking. There was one moment** when Al Gore spoke about his son being involved in a car accident and ending up in a critical condition in hospital. He spoke about how it changed his life, and how it made him devote his energies to the environmental cause. How it made him realise that he would have to fight to save the planet, because what he took for granted may not be there tomorrow. Ho-hum. But perhaps that is the main motivating factor for many of those passionate about environmentalism. It is a chance to convince yourself that you have found the truth about the future, and found a way to save yourself and your fellow humans. You can spread the word, and save the world. You have the key to salvation!

Which, when you put it like that, sounds not unlike evangelical Christianity.

Now I'm not saying that everyone who is interested in environmentalism, or everyone who pays lip service to the environmental cause***, is like an evangelical Christian. Far from it. But those like Gore, those who refuse to enter into a debate**** about the absolute truth of global warming, and are passionate about spreading the word across the world and changing the way people live their lives in relations to that absolute truth, display the absolute conviction in their belief that I have only really seen before in evangelical Christians. And whilst there is probably more scientific fact in global warming than in the highly unlikely story of a carpenter's son who could turn water into wine and rose from the dead, I still don't see the concept of global warming and the supposed implications of that global warming as absolute fact. So you could argue that the evangelical environmentalists are acting on faith rather than fact.

Which actually helps me to understand the environmentalist mindset. It must be very comforting to have discovered an absolute truth, and then be able to think that they have a way to save the world, and the unbelievers. I almost wish I could have a belief like that. But unfortunately the cynic in me demands (the most probably unachievable) proof before I can have that faith.

And the case for global warming could be made much more convincing if the zealous evangelists in that movement managed to put their faith to one side at the moment, and took on the sceptics in an intelligent, reasoned and sensible debate. But the problem is that their absolute conviction in the scientific "facts" behind their movement resembles faith and therefore stifles debate. As soon as someone has "faith", it becomes very difficult for them to accept argument against those fundamental beliefs.

*I also watched Demons. Which was cheesy, poorly scripted and gleefully anti-intellectual. But since it had zombies vomiting green poster
paint, it was a lot more fun that An Inconvenient Truth.
**Actually, more than a moment. At least five minutes. Which in a 91 minute film is quite a substantial amount of time.
***Such as recycling rubbish.
****And there is no acknowledgement in An Inconvenient Truth that there is any real opposition to the global warming movement other than the occasional arch reference to the "so-called sceptics".

Al Gore - Victim or Loser?

There is a rather interesting article in this week's Economist about Al Gore potentially running for President - and why he shouldn't bother. The broad sweep of the article is absolutely correct - Gore doesn't have the personality to run for President, and he lacks the spark he needs to have with the electorate. But for me the real reason why Gore shouldn't run is because he does not stand a chance of winning.

The Democratic party needed Gore in 2000 - there were no other credible candidates. They arguably need him on 2004 - when the Democrats managed to nominate the only person in their party who was less electable than Gore. But this time out the entire field of Democratic front runners appear credible candidates for the nomination - and indeed the White House.

Look at their pitches - Hillary Clinton is the heir apparent. She has the name recognition, she has the war chest, she had a peerless campaigner as her husband and she has the attention to policy detail. Sure, she winds up some people the wrong way, and lacks the charisma of her husband. But she is mounting a credible campaign for the nomination, and would be able to mount a credible bid for the White House.

Also running for the Democratic nomination is the apparent antithesis to Senator Clinton. Barack Obama is charismatic, a natural candidate. His Audacity of Hope more than makes up for his paucity of policy. Sure, he is a political lightweight compared to the like of Clinton but he looks like he could win.

And somewhere in the middle you have John Edwards. He is genial, credible and with recent experience of a presidential campaign. He has name recognition and whilst he is in third place at the moment, if the Democrats see Obama and Clinton as too much of a risk then he could be the perfect candidate in next year's General Election.

So there you have it - the capable, the charismatic and the compromise. There is not place in the field for Gore. In the charisma stakes he is beaten by Obama and Edwards. In the capability stakes he is beaten by Clinton. And in the name recognition stakes all three candidates can give him a good run for his money. He is soundly beaten - and this is just by people in his own party.

Gore would need to find a unique selling point to justify his bid for the White House. And what is he best known for now everyone hates Bush and most people want to leave Iraq? Banging on about the environment. Sure, this will make him popular with some sections of the American electorate. But those sections are the left wing, would be liberals. The Democrats need to branch out from their traditional base, whereas all Gore can offer is an appeal to those who would be voting Democrat already.

It is tempting to see a historical parallel between Nixon in 1968 and Gore in 2008. Nixon, a sitting Vice President, had been beaten in a very close election 8 years previously, with his rival arguably using some very underhand tactics. He staged an unlikely comeback against the backdrop of an unpopular war, and, despite having been written off as a potential President, he won the White House. However Nixon was lucky that his credible rivals left the race, one by one* and Nixon, for all of his faults, was a far better candidate than Gore, if only owing to his tenacity and ability to use all means at his disposal to fight. 2008 is not a re-run of 1968 - there are any number of tenable alternatives to the former Vice-President.

History has a place for Gore - he will be one of the great what-ifs, and will always gain some sympathy from history because of the perception that he was cheated by Bush Junior. But if he runs again he risks losing that sympathy. If he runs again, he loses, and instead of people feeling sympathy for him because he ran and won the election but lost the White House owing to nefarious action from his rival people will see him as the guy who kept on running, but just couldn't win.

*Lyndon Johnson refused to run owing to health problems and Vietnam, RFK was assassinated and Rockefeller was too liberal for his own party.

From Adviser to President?

So, Al Gore is now a special adviser for Gordon Brown? Bit of a comedown for the man who was, for eight years, a heartbeat away from being the most powerful man in the world. There are a number of different ways to view this, two of the most amusing takes being this and this.

But to me is seems fairly obvious what is behind all this. Gore has raised his media profile through releasing his film, now he is rebuilding his political profile by becoming an adviser for Gordo. He's preparing to run for President again, as far as I can see. He has spent the past seven years checking off all the boxes he needs to run in 2008 - he conceded the election in 2000 even though he won the popular vote and could well have won a recount, he was relatively supportive of the Iraq War initially, he avoided running again in 2004, he has released a film dealing with typically Democrat concerns and now he is advising the would-be British Prime Minister on the environment. And above all, he has claimed that he is not going to run again. And let's be honest, when a politician claims he or she is not going to do something it almost always means they are going to do it.

The only question that remains is exactly when Gore drops the facade and announces his candidacy.

2008

Inspired by this post, I thought I would have a look US Politics rather than the UK for once. And who will be vying to be Leader of the Free World (TM) in 2008:

Hillary Clinton – too hated by the American people for being a loudmouthed, female liberal. She won’t get the nomination and if she did, she wouldn’t win.

John McCain – Tortured for by the Vietcong. A passionate and vocal Senator. He is the most likely Republican candidate as he is a tough character but has also distanced himself from the Bush Administration. I think President John McCain is a real possibility.

Colin Powell – His wife doesn't want him to run and has been very forceful about it. She may well be right - there are still those in America who could take extreme action to prevent a coloured President.

Al Gore – Gore is not a natural politician and has already *lost* one Presidential Election but he remains a highly visible, and popular, figure in the Democratic Party and there is a historical precedent for someone to *lose* a presidential election and win eight years later – the late Richard Nixon. President Gore is not likely, but still possible.

Jeb Bush – He is too clever. No, really. When Dubya Bush screws up and does something evil people say “oh, well, he’s not a bad person, he’s just a bit dense. He doesn't understand.” With Jeb is would be a case of “No, wait, this guy does understand. He is just plain evil. He meant to do that. He is evil.”

Joseph Lieberman – Too Jewish. Not for me, for the large sections of the American people. There has never been a Jewish president, and given the loud voices of the Christian Right, it is unlikely to happen in the near future.

Wesley Clark – Not the most charismatic candidate but in the post 9/11 world a Democrat General turned President is a real possibility. Besides, a war hero with limited interpersonal skills but who could be presented as an avuncular figure? Worked very well for Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Howard Dean – The Dean Scream killed and chances of him ever winning the presidency or the nomination, I think.

John Edwards – He is too associated with the failed Kerry bid for the White House and whilst he is a genial, eloquent candidate he also has very little experience of just about anything and comes across as a third rate Kennedy.

John Kerry will not be able to stage a comeback – his was the worst run campaign since McGovern lost to Nixon in 1972 (and McGovern nominated for Vice-President a man who had had electro-shock therapy.)

Joe Biden would be a good choice for the Democrats, and the election may well be McCain against Biden. Biden stands a real chance as McCain tends to speak his mind too much for someone running for President. If Biden surrounded himself with Carville, McCurry and some of the other Clintonistas in the general election, we could see the Democrats return to the White House. But those guys will probably, to start with, support Hillary.

And that is ignoring a genuine wild card… Condi Rice. She says she doesn't want to run, but there are already "Draft Condi" movements. If she is called to serve, so to speak, she may not be able to resist.