The days are short in Oslo these days. No wonder they amuse themselves with Nobel fare.

Have a good and safe trip.

peretz,

On that dark night in 2000, I stayed up until FOXGOP called the election for Bush, then went to bed, told my wife, and we both cried. Of course, when we woke up, there was hope because, as  you stated, Gore won that election but...oh don't get me started.  After almost eight years, the wound still stings.

Give my best to your friend. Please tell him that our country would be so different, so much better and truer to our highest sense of national self and pride, if he hadn't been jobbed out of Florida.

Have a safe trip peretz...until you return.

What boulevardier said. My wife, to this day insists that Gore won that election.

Also tell Al Gore to enter the 08 race. There is still time, methinks.

You do carry our approval. I'm sure Al is proud of what he's done even wthout the complementary Presidential Seal tattoo. Send him our best.

Gore makes Mark Halperin's point of a guy who at the level of presidential politics was from hunger as a candidate/campaigner but would have been, I have no doubt, capable in office. Let's face it as a candidate he was no--and in this order--Bill Clinton, George Bush or Barack Obama ( a tie as campaigners), Hillary Clinton--just to rank rankly a few names that come to mind. As a candidate/campaigner he was and will ever be a stiff, tied for stiffness with John Kerry.

When Bill Clinton called me to ask me about a running mate I said, totally without cheek, "Don't listen to Peretz!"

Gore would have come under the exact same pressure to engineer a war with Iraq, and the idea that he would have prevented 9/11 is absurd.

The only thing I can think of is his more restrained fiscal treatment, which might have balanced the Fed's 15 minutes of pro-growth fame.

Most intriguing is Gore's radical activisim. I just can't see President Gore acting out his Green Hamlet in the White House. Certainly, not to the extent that he now claims. Kyoto, yea, maybe but without China and India it's - "The West Wing."

Maybe Gore's right. Maybe it is a "planetary emergency". If so, then his ultimate defeat and road to damascus was the best thing that ever happened to him, and us.

Then again, maybe we would be lameting another pro-growth-pro-fed presidency. Another lost opportunity. After all, Gore proposed a bigger military budget, pre 9-11 than the decider.

The myth machine maketh the man.

Gore's the man. The Ignorant Populist  is right, Gore couldn't have prevented 9/11 and couldn't have refrained from invading Afghanistan and Iraq. (I would also add: shouldn't.)

But Gore would have been a better president than the corrupt and incompetent Papa's boy who is now president (a man who, save for his connections, would have had trouble running a neighborhood grocery store).

Well Marty, congratulations for being invited!

The only sour note is that, unlike science or literature prizes, half of Nobel Peace prizes are given to all sorts of bastards (Arafat, Carter and other fuckheads).

Have a great time in Oslo, Marty.  Gore deserves this accolade.

By the way, have I missed something?  This is the sort of post I would have expected thomsondavid to go ballistic on.  Has he left the TNR family?  I don't read every comment thread, so did I miss a farewell and go-to-hell missive?

"Gore's the man. The Ignorant Populist  is right, Gore couldn't have prevented 9/11 and couldn't have refrained from invading Afghanistan and Iraq. (I would also add: shouldn't.)"sleepyavl

Maybe so, but he also would have been tougher on the Saudis.

myzaguirre

I haven't seen thomsondavid since the new-new was unleashed. Is he gone? Perhaps, or he is operating under a new user name, like me...

I don't believe there was anything as dramatic as a farewell dust up...he just disappeared.  Perhaps he never really existed at all...

Well, at least Gore would have conducted the wars with a sense of high standards, accepted expertise, ego-managing with difficult but tactilly helpful nations and professionalism.  

Try to even imagine Gore installing  21 year old Pat Robertson grads (sons of major contributors, natch) to build a stock exchange in Iraq.  Imagine him shatting upon allies who could have differed costs. Imagine him bolloxing the re-construction so shamefully as to defy words.

Imagine Gore wasting hundreds of billions of dollars, ignoring the insurgency (remember when Rummy yelled at anyone who said that word?  That went on for two years)?  

Say what you will about the man, Gore's detailed hyper-wonky mind would have come in handy, not to mention his sheer credibility on countless levels.

I do think he would have resisted Iraq II and made an excellent case for doing so.  It probably would have held during the four to eight years he was President, but the winger mob would not sit still until they pillaged and ruined everything they touched, so maybe it is better in the long run that Gore was robbed by history.  Clearly there was no other way to discredit these evil morons than to let them go at it and ruin themselves.  Sad.

Gore is one of our finest public men, not perfect thank God - a great man who has had an enormous impact on the entire world.  May he continue to do so, we'd all be much better for it.

You are lucky to have such a friend Marty, bon voyage.

You goin' English on us, wandrey? Never mind the "bollox(ing)"; what's up with "shatting"?

Why one earth would Gore have gone into Iraq?  Iraq was Cheney and Bush's pipe dream.  Hadn't they been planning an invasion even before 9/11?  Didn't they just use 9/11 as an excuse?  Nobody brought up Iraq until they did.    

Tep:  I think  "shite" is the Brit slang for excrement.  Ig Pop:  Can you answer this?  

Marty--keep warm.  And enjoy the gravlax for me.

I do not wish to attack Gore and even think that he deserved part of the prize. But howcome the Europeans and the Japanes who are actually working on it, reducing emissions, paying taxes (for instance, paying € 1.40 for liter of gasoline in order for environmental costs to be internalized, reducing taxes on greener cars and making them hard on other cars), investing in public transport and preparing the more ambitious targets of post-Kyoto (the US hasn't even signed that...) are left with nothing? Is doing the talking more important than actually making sacrifices (in a place where doing the talking would be considered ridiculous, since everyone is aware of what Gore is saying for at least two or three decades)?

As I said I do not wish to deny Gore's merit. He has a lot (and by the way, he would make a magnificent American President: he should be forced to be candidate...). But this prize is not deserved only by Gore and the UN... a third and fourth party should have got it to in order to symbolize praisal for actual action and for actual sacrifices...

Anyway, I'm pleased with Gore's speech by giving merit to who deserves it...

Molly - I believe that's _North_ Brit slang, also NW Brit/Irish slang

Thomsendavid has been spending his time posting over at Commentary's Contentions blog, under the name "David Thomsen." For a long-time reader, his postings will be immediately recognizable even without the similar handle.

Bill Clinton contacted Marty Peretz for advice?

Well, I guess this was a momentary lapse of reason.

But I will forgive you, Blll

VVerma: But will you forgive him for taking advantage of a 20-year-old intern? And then, out of cowardice, destroying her life?