Al Gore appeared on “Meet the Press” yesterday for an interview that largely emphasized the former Vice President’s speech last week on energy policy, but Tom Brokaw extended the subjects to include everything from Joe Lieberman to the now-infamous New Yorker cover to the land use devoted to the Gore family house.
But of all the extraneous points, this one was just odd.
Brokaw reminded Gore of a recent quote, in which Gore said, “What politics has become requires a level of tolerance for triviality and artifice and nonsense that I have found in short supply.” That hardly sounds like a controversial thing to say.
But Brokaw was apparently disappointed with the comment, asking Gore, “Is that the right kind of signal to send to the young people of this country who, more than any time in recent memory, are deeply involved in the political decisions that we’re making this year, and young people who want to get into the political arena, look to Al Gore, and he said it’s all about trivia and nonsense.”
Now, Gore was polite about it, and explained how encouraged he is to see young people get involved in the political process, and the importance of “the new Internet-based forms of organizing and mobilizing people.”
But I’m not sure if I would have been as gracious. Brokaw’s question didn’t make any sense at all. The point of the quote Brokaw read is that Gore’s patience has run thin, in large part because politics — and more importantly, the political media — too often obsesses over “triviality and artifice and nonsense.” Brokaw saw this as a denunciation of politics in general, and a call for young people to avoid political life.
But Brokaw’s interpretation seems to be backwards.
I’m going to assume Brokaw hasn’t read Gore’s book, “The Assault on Reason,” but the point of Gore’s thesis isn’t that politics is stupid, it’s that politics is too important for so much stupidity.
Of course Gore finds himself short on tolerance for artifice and nonsense. He had to endure a year of campaigning in which the media decided that he’d claimed to have invented the Internet. He cleaned Bush’s clock in one of the more important political debates in a generation, and the media decided his sighs were the most important development of the event.
Even yesterday, Gore appeared on “Meet the Press” to talk about a looming climate crisis, and Brokaw spent quite a bit of time trying to pin Gore down on whether he’d serve in an Obama administration.
Gore doesn’t believe politics is necessarily dominated by “triviality and artifice and nonsense”; Gore seems to believe politics can be improved so that “triviality and artifice and nonsense” don’t crowd out things that matter. He’s not discouraging people from getting involved in politics; he’s encouraging people to make politics less inane.
Or, to summarize, what is Tom Brokaw talking about?
For those who can’t watch clips online, here’s a transcript of the segment:
MR. BROKAW: Let me ask you about your attitude toward politics these days.
VICE PRES. GORE: Mm-hmm.
MR. BROKAW: I was a little surprised. You’re a man who was in politics at the highest level in this country…
VICE PRES. GORE: Mm-hmm.
MR. BROKAW: …in the House of Representatives and the Senate, vice president for eight years, and yet you said recently, “What politics has become requires a level of tolerance for triviality and artifice and nonsense that I have found in short supply.” Is that the right kind of signal to send to the young people of this country who, more than any time in recent memory, are deeply involved in the political decisions that we’re making this year and young people who want to get into the political arena, look to Al Gore, and he said it’s all about trivia and nonsense.
VICE PRES. GORE: Well, no. I, I–that quote you used was about my own personal tolerance for–bear in mind, I was in the political process for almost 30 years. And no, I encourage young people to get involved. And public service is an honorable calling, and, and I’m very excited, by the way, about the fact that millions of young people, who haven’t been involved in the past, are now getting involved, many of them for Senator Obama, of course. And, and I think that’s exciting.
I do think, Tom, that we have a very serious set of problems affecting our democracy–the role of big money, the role of lobbyists, the role of special interests. It’s a very serious problem for our democracy. I think that the new Internet-based forms of organizing and mobilizing people–and that’s what’s gotten a lot of these young people involved–offer a real ray of hope. I’m optimistic. But I think my best role is to try to help that bring–come, come to pass and to focus on enlarging the political space so that we can start focusing on real solutions and not these gimmicks.