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Tag Archives | Al Gore

Al Gore, Reconsidered

Now that we’re faced with Al Gore’s Inconvenient Sequel, it is tempting to ask, again: What if he’d actually won the Presidential election back in 2000? Remember when the century turned, the chads clung and hung, Florida was in Republican hands, and the Supreme Court ended up deciding the race in favor of the fortunate son of a former president? How many wayward chads would it have taken to give us 4 years of Al Gore, the “beta male” who wore sweaters in heather hues, and spoke calmly about the calamitous state of our global environment? For one thing, I don’t think we’d have pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord. But what else might have — or not have happened?

I had the chance to interview the Vice President for NHPTV in the autumn of 1999, prior to the New Hampshire Presidential Primary. Little did I know of what was to come, or I might have asked somewhat different questions.
I remember it was colder out than it looked, and Gore nursed a cup of coffee throughout the interview, while attempting to come off as well … approachable, like his two chief Republican opponents: the easygoing George W. Bush and the jubilant John McCain, who at the time was touring the state in his Straight Talk Express. More on that in the next post.
But in the meantime, let me know what you think of Gore, back in the Twentieth Century, before our continuum got torqued!

Posted on August 6, 2017 in a new podcast, Environment, Front Page, Politics
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A Prior Democratic Presidential Debate

Back in 2000, before we’d ever heard of Al Quaeda, Abu Ghraib or ISIS, we somehow managed to survive a Presidential Primary season with our national dignity relatively intact. Those were however less traumatic times. Do you know what we were worried about back then? Whether or not our computers would implode when their 1s and 0s flipped over to face the new century. Good old Y2K. How innocent we were back then.
But — it could be argued that this same Presidential race and its hotly contested aftermath, oh so indelicately umpired by the Supreme Court, was the spark which lit the fuse that hurtled us down the path to our current predicament.
So let’s rewind the tape, and take another look. (NB: click on the link just provided, NOT on the images.)
AlGore New Hampshire is always the first state to vote in the primaries, and the millennial year was no exception. It was scheduled for February 1st, 2000, and was less than a month away when a Democratic Presidential Primary Debate took place in Durham, New Hampshire, pitting Vice President Al Gore against former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley. The January 5th debate was moderated by ABC TV’s Peter Jennings. I too was a participant, as a correspondent for New Hampshire Public TV.

jenny:dems So — in taking a look 16 years after the fact, how does it seem to you now? Quaint and out of date? Does it hold hints of what was to come? What should we have done differently that might have made the future a better place?

Posted on February 25, 2016 in Politics
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