A Nobel Prize-winning President?
Posted by Matt Clifford on February 4th, 2007
I confess that I am not one of the real Clare Politics bloggers, but having seen Liz’s West Wing reference in the previous posy, I couldn’t resist. The West Wing has occasionally been dismissed as a liberal fantasy: how likely are we to have a Nobel Laureate Democrat with a serious chance of winning the White House? However, recent reports suggest that it just might happen. Several reports say that Al Gore, the Democrats’ almost-winning candidate in 2000 and creator of An Inconvenient Truth, has been nominated for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
True, a lot of things would have to fall into place before we had a Jed Bartlett: Gore would have to win the Nobel, announce his candidacy, win the nomination and win the election. All of which seems very unlikely, but not impossible. The betting markets suggest he has around a 10% chance of winning the nomination - not bad for someone who hasn’t declared - and he remains more googled than any of his Democratic rivals. Don’t rule him out yet.
Filed under: election2008, uspolitics on February 4th, 2007
We had Churchill…..Noble Prize for Literature, 1953. A historian making a great politician….
Very true, Owen - though Mr Churchill never ran for election as a Nobel Laureate. Would be interesting to see how that would play, if at all, with the voters . . .
Matt, it’s President Bartlet, with one ‘t’.
Ahem. Sorry.
I can’t make up my mind about Al Gore. I honestly like the idea of him running as VP again - he’s a single issue candidate at the moment. How can he persuade the electorate that he’s able to be as serious at tackling healthcare reform or saving Social Security? Not to mention the fact that while Americans like the idea of doing something about climate change, when it comes to the crunch I don’t imagine people would turn out in huge numbers to vote for someone who would take their gas-guzzlers away. Or maybe I’m just being too cynical. I like Al Gore. At the age of 11 I refused to let my history teacher write the date and ‘the day George W. Bush was elected President of the USA’ on the whiteboard because there was still the possibility of a recount.
But I don’t know. I can’t help feeling that he could make much more of an influence continuing doing what he’s doing rather than having to struggle through the entire political process.
I don’t think Al Gore is telegenic enough, although he does have the height that even President Bartlet lacked (it’s hard to admit that he’s not perfect though…)
Does anyone else find Santos just too much of a democrat fantasy, the guy who comes up with the perfect answer to all the difficult questions, who really is a ‘conviction politician’, and has the cute blonde wife on the side as well? Bartlet was believable. Santos just looked too good in his combat gear.