Bilbo and I have been spending a lot of time these last few months arguing about whether your Al Gore should run for president. (You remember I'm sure that after the ring was destroyed Bilbo and I sailed off with the elves into the eternal lands, where we have, for the last few thousand years, been watching with varied degrees of astonishment what a strange world you men have been creating.)
I've been arguing that Elected-but-not-sitting-President Gore should run again. I've admired Gore ever since I realized he was probably the only member of your Senate who could use the word eco-feminism in a meaningful sentence. To me it was his supposed partnership with Gore that gave me hope for Bill Clinton, but I was then profoundly disappointed by Gore's acceptance of Clinton's turn away from populism. I understand the proper role of the VP, and I admit my ignorance as to what progressive role Gore may have played in the Clinton White House, but after he ran that lame campaign in 2000 I really didn't expect to hear much of interest from or about Gore ever again.
Ever since 2002 I have, like so many of you, become more and more impressed by the new outspoken Gore. With his words, in his actions, in everything he's done these last few years he has shown himself to be truly a step ahead of any other mainstream politician. Indeed at times he has reminded me of my old friend Strider.
And that's what I've told Bilbo - just as Aragorn had his years of wandering and searching for his true self, Al Gore has been to the wilderness and has found his true self.
Bilbo just won't agree. He's always telling me that Elrond says that global warming is just so important that we need a leader like Gore focused on it 100% (Bilbo always brings Elrond into any argument). He makes essentially two distinct arguments. The first is about the race, and his certainty that the MSM will savage Gore the way it did in 2000, leading to the further trivialization of discussions of climate change. In this regard he also tends to think that the Isengarders (his term for the Clintons, he only sees one side of people sometimes) will be vicious in their attacks and that it will hopelessly split the Democrats. Secondly, he is convinced if Gore could actually win he would, as president, be so distracted by the issue of the day that he'd loose his focus on global warming and become just another politician bargaining for the "best" deal.
Now I must admit that these are good points. I just don't think he gives Gore enough credit. I argue that the man who spoke out in the wilderness of 2002 against the war (well, it wasn't completely a wilderness, there were millions of you people out on the streets just saying no), who has taken on the Dark Lord over and over, who went silently to New Orleans to succour the sick and the poor, is not a man who will easily fold or loose focus. Beyond that the White House is the world's greatest bully pulpit, and even if Gore can't work on global warming all the time he can and would appoint people who can craft his insights into workable solutions.
And that's where we've been for the last few months. We both think Al is the man, we just can't agree on how he will be most effective. I tell Bilbo he's a cynic, and he tells me I just don't understand how the world really works.
This weekend, however, Galadriel came to dinner and what she had to say is making me rethink my opinion. She sat there smiling while Bilbo and I argued, and refused to get involved or take sides. (She did start crying when we talked about Iraq, but she argeed with Elrond that as tragic as that or any war is it's climate change alone which could actually threaten the land of the Elves.) Anyway, as we were walking out through the garden to see her off she turned to us and said "What if he isn't Aragorn, what if he's Mithrandir?"
Nonsense, I thought, he's a man. No man could be Gandolf. The next morning, however, when Bilbo and I went out to smoke some pipe weed after breakfast I couldn't get what she said out of my head (which is usually the way it works with Galadriel). What if he was Gandolf? It could be. After a couple thousand years of enjoying the elves Gandolf just couldn't settle down and had found ways to wander back to live with men again, although he didn't have much of his old power left when he entered a world dominated by organized religion. It's true he's been away for 50 or 60 years now (hard to keep track here you know). Could he have found a way to incarnate as an American politician?
Well, only time will tell on that one, and I did manage to put it out of my mind in the course of the day. Actually it was when the weed was wearing off and I was lighting another pipe: what climate change is for Elrond prohibition is to Gandolf. I've sat here and heard him say that America took it's greatest wrong turn, outside of slavery I suppose, when the pipe weed was banned; if he really was Gore then that issue would not be put aside! No, I realized, Al Gore is not Gandolf, but maybe he's more like Gandolf than like Strider.
He does have a lot of Strider's strengths: courage, experience, wisdom, integrity, to name a few. But what really set Aragorn apart was his ability to make you believe you could succeed against any odds. Al's inspiring, but does he really make you believe in yourself the way certain leaders do? Al Gore will demand a lot of people, because the times demand a lot of people, and Al's greatest strength may be his ability to pin point what we need to be real about at this juncture in history. That was Gandolf's way - to help you see where your effort was most needed in the world of your times. Isn't that exactly what Al Gore has done these last few dark years, and in various ways at different times: made us aware of what issues were most fundemental to our future. Which is very different from being an Aragorn, a leader who really inspires the confidence that together we can do it. Can Al do that? I don't know. He certainly didn't prove it in 2000. Is he different now? Obviously. Has he been inspiring? yes. Can he keep it up, and in the face of what we know will be several different choruses trying variously to trivialize, demonize and emmasculate him?
So maybe he really is Gandolf. Not my Gandolf, but yours. Maybe his job is to help you see reality and your place in it. To give you a vision of your struggle. Gandolf refused the ring. And that was his strength. The ring would have destroyed him as he tried to use it, but giving it up he gave me the strength to take on the burden. He showed me my place in a bigger struggle, and the example of his dedication, of his self-knowledge and life long commitment became a guide for me in facing the struggle I was given. He didn't want power, he wanted the people to struggle together to find their way each according to their own strengths. He would step in and fight the Balrog for us, but taking the ring fell on us.
The other thing about Gandof was that you had to listen very hard. He said exactly what he meant, but he thought so deeply that it took the rest of us time to catch up. Maybe Al really means it when he says that poliics is not his strength, and maybe he really believes it when he says we need to find new ways to create social movements. Maybe his wisdom is that the ring, I mean the presidency is not the prize. Maybe he is right when he says we need a genuine social movement, and implies that that includes students blocking bulldozers to stop further coal emisions. Maybe he sees that it can't be done from above, that only when even the hobbits rise up will the struggle be won.
Maybe Al Gore is right when he says he has other things to do than run for president. Maybe he really can do more by playing to his strengths. Maybe he's just not crazy enough to want to be president any more. In my book that could be taken as his greatest qualification, but it might also make it impossible to win. Maybe Al Gore knows that he needs to be honest with us, and once the campaign starts he won't be able to be. There are truths that someone of his stature needs to speak that once spoken preclude winning the presidency at this time. Maybe Al Gore needs to change the dialogue - just as unelectable right wingers did over the last three decades - so that others can win their races.
And speaking of hobbits - aren't a lot of us saying that we want an "electable" Dennis Kuccinich to run when we hold up Gore as the idol. I mean as far as issues go? Iraq, Iran, health care, global warming, corporate power... but we all know someone with as much hobbit blood as Kuccinich could never win. Seriously.
But maybe that's part of building a movement. The support Jesse Jackson built in his equally quixotic campaigns changed the principles of the democratic party. Maybe if enough of us who are waiting on AlGore made a commitment to Dennis's campaign we could shift the debate in the party just as Al Gore is doing in his various ways. Of course, in the end we will all vote for the democrat, but perhaps in the time being we could bring some delegates who are commited to transformational principles to the convention. No primary votes for anyone who won't commit to getting out of Iraq, not invading Iran, single payer health care, a mandated 80% reduction in green house gasses, and legalized pipe weed. Just a thought from the land of elves.
Which reminds me of one other thing Al Gore and Gandolf share - a real love for American democracy. Al showed that with his grace in 2000. Gandolf, which of course none of you would know, was perhaps the only one here who cheered on the American revolution. The elves just didn't get it. You see, they're just so inately good that they can't even imagine power being abused and just assume that the smartest and kindest will naturally be the leaders - they seem to have forgotten much about their time in middle earth. Gandolf got it, though, he understood that by creating checks and balances and releasing the brilliance of the people in this new thing called democracy the world would be transformed. And look what you've done! Even the elves are impressed. Maybe Al Gore, like Gandolf, understands that only the people working together can change a world, and that the ring is not the prize. Truth is.
Anyway, that's what Galadriel got me thinking these last couple of days. I'm no longer sure Al should run, but I'm not sure he shouldn't either. I wish he'd say more about his own thinking, but I certainly understand the political risks of doing so. I'm also thinking that maybe another way to put aspects of the above is that the draft Gore movement should become the write in Gore movement. Especially since there are so many non-hobbit lovers among you who just couldn't vote for Dennis. What if a plurality of delegates went to the Democratic convention commited to write ins for Al Gore and he wasn't even running? That would be people power, that would be a mandate, that would be the power to tell the party what to do.
Just some things I've been thinking.
Thanks for listening to an old hobbit,
Frodo Baggins