Winners and losers

Almost eight years have gone by since Albert Arnold Gore Jr, the Democratic nominee for president of the United States in the 2000 election lost the presidency in a controversial recount of votes in the state of Florida.

Now, eight years later, the man who would be president is a popular figure worldwide, while the incumbent president George W. Bush is struggling with a legacy as the man who lost the hearts and minds not only of his own people but the world at large.

In the eight years since he conceded the election, Al Gore has risen to prominence as an environmental activist, getting regular people to rally around the man-made climate change crisis and raising awareness among businesses and governments to help solve it.

His 2006 academy award-winning documentary film An Inconvenient Truth on the topic of global warming grabbed the world by its eyeballs after which he was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, which he shared with Rajendra K. Pachauri of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

He further wrote a book The Assault on Reason, taught at four US universities, helped organise the July 2007 benefit concert for global warming, Live Earth, and founded the Alliance for Climate Protection (www.wecansolveit.org).

Would he have made a better president than George W. Bush, I have often wondered.

Well, who knows how he would have handled 9/11 and its aftermath. Would he have gone to war in Afghanistan? Would American soldiers have died in Iraq? That was not his destiny. An HBO TV movie called Recount, which premiered this week in the US, pulls back the veil to explore the human drama surrounding the most controversial election in US history.

Oscar winner Kevin Spacey stars as Al Gore’s former Chief of Staff, Ron Klain, while Laura Dern plays Katherine Harris – the Florida Secretary of State who apparently handed the presidency to George W. Bush in cahoots with his brother Jeb Bush – then Governor of Florida.

Spacey is already slated to win an Emmy for his performance, Harris is down and out, Bush is preparing to exit, and Gore is planning to raise funds for both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton at a "unity dinner" for the Democratic National Convention on May 31. The winners are now the losers. 

Nirmala Janssen
editor@alnisrmedia.com

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