Getting Hot

Al Gore, non-candidate for president of the United States, is suddenly drawing such warm coverage that you wonder whether climate change is melting the hearts of journalists who once portrayed him as a cold fish.

I mean, the guy is being portrayed as a heroic figure saving the planet, with the only outstanding question whether he will heed the call of the masses and run for the job he failed to win in 2000.

What's really striking is that the ex-veep got terrible coverage during that campaign, when he was depicted as an Internet-inventing exaggerator who sighed during the debates and needed a consultant to steer him to an earth-toned wardrobe. Afterward, Gore was savaged for losing an election that was widely viewed as winnable.

Well, that was before he had a hit movie that won a couple of Oscars, I guess. Now there's an awestruck tone to the Gore narrative (as he hits the circuit to publicize a new book):

A Time cover story says that if you were designing the ideal stealth candidate for 2008, "you would want someone like Al Gore--the improbably charismatic, Academy Award--winning, Nobel Prize--nominated environmental prophet with an army of followers and huge reserves of political and cultural capital at his command . . .

"He dedicated himself to a larger cause, doing everything in his power to sound the alarm about the climate crisis, and that decision helped transform the way Americans think about global warming and carried Gore to a new state of grace."

State of grace?

Here's the New York Times Magazine take on the man:

"Al Gore has attained what you can only call prophetic status; and he has done so by acting as he could not, or would not, as a candidate -- saying precisely what he believes, and saying it with clarity, passion, intellectual mastery and even, sometimes, wit."

A prophet?

The magazine reminds us that "the Al Gore of September 2005 was not the Saint Albert of today."

Sainthood?