Has It Really Been Two Years Already?

Today marks the 2nd anniversary of this blog. When I started writing in the spring of 2004, it looked like the Democrats had an excellent chance of turning Bush out of office. Now it's the spring of 2006, and it looks like the Democrats have an excellent chance of recapturing the Congress. Let's hope that a pattern doesn't form, so that the next 2 years don't seem quite as long as the previous ones.

Last night Dr. Brazen Hussy and I attended an event with Al Gore and the makers of his movie. The eminent climatologist James Hansen was also in attendance. I was pleasantly surprised when Hansen said that the window of opportunity for solving global warming had not yet closed - that we still had another decade. This would be nice to believe.

More importantly, this was the first time I'd seen Al Gore close up since I was a teenager. I actually got to meet him! Hearing him speak, I had to wonder at the charicature that appeared in the 2000 campaign. The man was earnest, passionate, funny, and even inspiring. At one point I even got goose bumps, and I'm not prone to such things. Sitting in that room listening at him demand that we do something, rather than wait for some politician to do it, spoke to some of my deepest convictions.

Of course the 2008 question was asked. Gore said pretty much what he said to Alterman: that he'd be lying if he didn't think about it, but that he wasn't sure if he was suited to the "toxic sound-byte culture" of contemporary politics. Frankly he didn't sound like a candidate. I think what he's doing is leveraging speculation about his candidacy to force the media and other politicians to focus on the issue of global warming. It's pretty clever, actually.

It was hard to watch Al and not think about how he was robbed in 2000, and might be again if he ran in 2008. Ezra Klein points out how the media turned of Al simply because he was smarter than them. But I must say that we musn't let the press dissuade our best candidates from running, because they'll do this to ANY of them, not just Gore - just look at what David Broder said about Hillary.

It's pretty appalling to think that journalists will destroy any politician who is smarter than them and doesn't hide it. Because in case you didn't know, almost everybody is smarter than these guys.

On a happier note, here's a dog using a cat as a pillow: