October 12, 2007

Gore Wins Nobel Peace Prize; Wild Speculation Ensues

UPDATED.

As many anticipated, the Norwegian Nobel Committee today awarded its prestigious prize for peace to former Vice President Al Gore and the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a move that has rekindled speculation that Gore could still jump into the 2008 White House race.

Gore, who has been crusading against climate change ever since he lost the 2000 presidential race to George W. Bush, "is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted" to curb global warming, the committee said in bestowing the award on him. Reuters has the full text of the committee's citation.

Gore told reporters this afternoon that he would be donating his half of the $1.5 million prize to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works to spread awareness and spur action on the climate change issue.

Congratulating the IPCC and thanking the Nobel committee for the award, Gore said, "I will be doing everything I can to try to understand how to best use the honor and recognition of this award as a way of speeding up the change in awareness and the change in urgency. It truly is a planetary emergency and we have to respond quickly."

What he didn't say is that he'll be running for president in 2008, but that hasn't stopped his staunch supporters from holding out hope.

The "Draft Gore" movement purchased $65,000 worth of ad space in the New York Times earlier this week to urge Gore to run, citing their dissatisfaction with the current crop of Democratic candidates. The group is also running a radio ad.

Earlier in the year, Gore had been polling relatively well among Democratic voters, even as he continued to insist that he was not running. But as Democrats have increasingly warmed to front-runners Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, the enthusiasm for Gore appears to have waned. About 10 percent of Democratic voters favored him in a recent Gallup poll, down from 18 percent in June. For more on those numbers, see NationalJournal.com's Poll Track (subscription).

Even before it was announced, today's Nobel news was already leading many a pundit to wonder if Gore's latest laurels wouldn't boost his ego enough to propel him into the White House race. Pollsters and reporters alike, salivating at the prospects of a Clinton-Gore matchup, aren't likely to let up until Gore gives a definitive response to the "Will he or won't he?" question. Here's hoping he does so sooner rather than later.

Meanwhile, not everyone's feeling happy for Gore today. Conservatives are predictably rolling their eyes at the Nobel nod. And just in time to shed fresh doubts on Gore's signature documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," a British high court ruled earlier this week that the film, while "substantially founded upon scientific research and fact," contained nine errors in "the context of alarmism and exaggeration." Ouch.

Posted at 2:10 PM
Posted to: Al Gore, Campaigns, Democrats, WH 2008
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