Now you KNOW any hopes that some have that Al Gore will become President are doomed. Why, he’s actually cracking jokes now that aren’t calculated to run down opponents and generate authentic laughs. The setting: San Jose where he was meeting some of the world’s top scientists:
On the topic of how he’s been adjusting to life outside of Washington:
“I flew on Air Force Two for eight years,” he said, “and now I have to take off my shoes to get on an airplane.”
When visiting relatives with his wife, “we had to drive ourselves. I looked in the back mirror and it hit me there was no motorcade back there. This was a rented Ford Taurus.”
AND:
Eating one day at a Shoney’s restaurant — think Denny’s and you wouldn’t be far off — he overheard a waitress whisper to a customer that, yes, that was Al Gore, the former Vice President, eating at a nearby table. To which the man said, “He’s come down a long way.”
Traveling in the middle of the night, in the middle of the Atlantic, Gore heard someone yelling at him to “call Washington, call Washington!” Wondering what in the world could be wrong in Washington at that time of night, he said, he then “remembered it could be a bunch of things.”
One day, he saw a woman walk by him and do a double-take. He said hello. “You know,” she said, “if you dyed your hair black, you’d look just like Al Gore.”
His No. 1 comment not related to climate change and global warming?
“I’m now a recovering politician,” he said. “I’m on about step 9.”
So far Gore is insisting he’s not jumping in again. Still, it’s interesting to watch his evolution in this latest Al Gore incarnation – which most accounts of Gore say is the “real” Gore unwisely suppressed by a combination of bad political consultant advice and bad political decisions in 2000 (remember the debate where he looked like he was wearing makeup lent to him by a mime?).
The transformation in public perceptions began when Gore allowed people to see a more passionate person. It started with his excellent documentary (we reviewed it HERE) and he seems like he’s having fun. All the more reason to suspect: he won’t run. And, if he does, he won’t have fun anymore.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.