Who can unify the Democratic Party?

source: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/29/2177/

In recent days, the word used more and more frequently to describe Hillary Clinton’s march to the Democratic presidential nomination has been “inevitable.” She consistently leads public opinion polls across the country by a good 10 points over her nearest rival. Hollywood, after a brief infatuation with Barack Obama, is now, according to the Los Angeles Times, consolidating its support behind the junior senator from New York. Rupert Murdoch employee Peter Chernin extracted a cool $850,000 from wealthy Angelenos for the former first lady at a recent event in his home. A few days later, she was endorsed by the King of Hollywood himself — Steven Spielberg.

I wonder if Mr. Spielberg will change his mind when Al Gore declares his candidacy this fall. <skip>

The majority of my Democratic friends have devoted most of their attentions to the three avowed front-runners — Clinton, Obama, and John Edwards. Yet during the last six months or so, whenever I’ve asked them whom they would choose if they were choosing between four candidates — Clinton, Obama, Edwards, and Al Gore — probably 90 percent have told me, in a heartbeat, that they’d go for Gore. <skip>

I saw Al Gore speak on May 22nd, at the Wilshire Theatre in Beverly Hills, in the inaugural event of his tour for The Assault on Reason. In a live on-stage conversation with Harry Shearer, the contrast between Gore’s sheer intellectual firepower and that of the man who (didn’t) beat him in 2000, the man who I recently heard on the radio, with my own ears, say, “the literacy level of our high school students are appalling,” was, well, appalling. Gore traced the path from the Middle Ages to our own constitution. He discussed the relevance of Marshall McLuhan to our present predicaments, and the overwhelming dominance today of images over ideas. He lamented that the “well-informed citizenry” envisioned by our framers has degenerated into a “well-amused audience.” He issued a plea for all Americans to work to restore to our public square a rational policy debate within a democratic marketplace of ideas.

On a more prosaic and immediate level, he delivered a blistering critique of the Bush Administration’s Iraq debacle, its inaction on climate change, its obeisance to the rich and the powerful and the corporate elite, and its casting aside the long-standing American ethos against torture — first insisted upon, he reminded us, by George Washington. And he made my own anti-nuclear heart beat more quickly when he delivered a one-word verdict on Bush’s plans to build a new generation of nuclear weapons while hectoring countries like Iran and North Korea (and likely soon others) to forego nuclear weapons.

“Insane.” <skip>

Is there any political figure in America today who can better restore our faith in the light than Al Gore? Is there anyone who would better pursue not just American national interests but also common human interests, who would call upon not just our national patriotism but also our planetary patriotism, who might deliver a speech from the floor of the Congress not on the “State of the Union” but on the “State of the Earth?” Is there any better way the forces of peace and justice and hope can evoke the better angels of our nature than to mobilize, now, together, to demand an Al Gore candidacy?