Al Gore should run for president

The problem with a Gore candidacy, to be blunt, is Gore. He can be a wooden candidate. His relationship with the press is challenging, to say the least. He is an aging politician in a country that loves new faces. His finances are complicated, and he made an insane sum of money by selling his cable network to al Jazeera. His divorce from Tipper Gore means his personal life isn’t the storybook it once was. He is loathed by conservatives who find his environmentalism to be rank hypocrisy from a jet-setting, Davos-attending mansion-dweller — as politically polarized as concern over climate change already is, Gore could polarize it yet further.

But is that really so different than the list of drawbacks to a Clinton candidacy?

There’s no sign that Gore has even a scintilla of interest in running for president (though he is making a May stop in Iowa…). And I don’t think it particularly likely that, even if he did run for president, he would win. Climate change is a threat, but I am far from convinced that doing anything about it makes for good politics.

But as bad as the odds are if a candidate does try to run for president with climate change at the center of his campaign, they’re much worse if the major candidates from both parties largely ignore the issue. And Gore knows it. He’s spent the last decade trying everything he can think of to force Americans to pay more attention to climate change. He’s made movies, written books, given speeches, testified before Congress — he’s even producing a Live Earth concert with Pharrell Williams.