Al's Big Chance

It's tough being the loser in a contest played out on the world stage, especially when you just can't believe you are the loser, and your friends keep saying: "You were cheated!"

Sooner or later, the moment comes when you have to sip from the bitter cup of defeat.

But it doesn't have to be hemlock. It could be the chance of a lifetime.

That's the situation now confronting Al Gore, a wealthy guy and longtime political insider - second generation U.S. Senator - who, like George W. Bush, convinced so few voters of his worthiness that we wound up with the closest election in American history.

Dubya will have to prove his worth under fire, to a public filled with doubters of his legitimacy as president, his intentions, his competence, and even his intellectual capacity.

Gore doesn't have to put up with any of those inconvenient obstacles.

A privileged individual who doesn't face the financial black hole awaiting so many Americans who awake to find themselves jobless, Gore is uniquely free to do all the good he wants and serve the public without ever detouring to kowtow to his political opponents.

This would be a brave new world indeed for the vice president, who always seemed to be protesting way too much in his need to repeatedly tell us that he is "his own man."

It's not a good sign when you feel the need to say that, just like it wasn't a good sign when Richard Nixon repeatedly felt the need to tell us - first, indirectly, in his famous "Checkers" speech, and later, flat out - that he was "not a crook."

So now that Gore, his own man, as he says, is completely unfettered from all that loyal number two to President Clinton baggage, will he finally enter the brave new world of aggressively pursuing those causes he has told us are the ones that truly light his fire?

Gore has talked about the tobacco farming profits formerly earned by his family and his sorrow at his sister's death from lung cancer.

He has lambasted the tobacco industry and worked to make it harder to sell cigarettes to minors.

But how about serving up some real change instead?

Without having to answer to "what can politically be done right now," Gore could leap past the same old tired cliches and do something to attack the root cause of the tobacco problem: the lure of the money.

As part of its war on drugs, the U.S. has long recognized the fact that farmers in foreign countries who make their living growing the plants that turn into heroin and cocaine aren’t likely to stop growing them until they are given some assistance in switching over to an equally profitable alternate crop.

Instead of demonizing the men and women who work in the tobacco business – with the exception of the executives who have deliberately and cravenly lied to the public – why not do something to help the American farmers and factory and office workers whose economic livelihood depends on our best-known carcinogen?

l Gore is a son of the South. He knows what tobacco really means to those who reap its profits.

In the same way that Nixon was able to reach out to China, Gore could - with some imagination - choose to reach out to Tobacco Road.

Picture this: a liberated Gore setting up his own foundation to Free Tobacco Road. He could offer grants to help farmers and farm businesses switch crops. There could be training programs for white collar and blue collar tobacco industry workers interested in improving their skills and earning clean money untainted by the tobacco man’s burden as a salesman of a potentially death-inducing product. Lobbyists who previously swarmed on Capitol Hill could instead descend on towns dependent on tobacco and help attract and build more forward-looking sources of revenue.

And what about the environment?

Gore's been on the political stage all his life and at the apex of the Washington power scene for eight years.

But aside from writing Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit, no defining environmental achievements come to mind.

Now that Al's really on his own and doesn't have to worry about rocking the boat, he could choose to do something big for the environment.

How about tackling an increasingly serious crisis: hog waste?

AP Photo Gore, who knows both the farmers and the environmentalists, might be able to mediate the fierce fight over hog waste.

Typically, they feature huge "lagoons" funneling hundreds of thousands of gallons of animal urine and feces into the surrounding land and water, subject to whatever laws happen to be on the books in any particular region.

Concerns about water quality and the potential health hazards of the extremely powerful airborne stench have turned millions of ordinary citizens into environmentalists.

Could Gore be the one to provide the leadership to mediate the ferocious battle raging in nearly every region of the country, between activists fighting to protect their health and their homes and big business, worried about being legislated into the red?

The state-by-state patchwork approach - not unlike our approach to standards for what kind of ballots Americans should use to cast their votes - has been a giant flop.

It's time for some creative thinking.

"Now the political struggle is over," said Gore, in his concession speech, adding: "It's time for me to go."

Well, it could be.

Or it could be just time for him to get going.

Prove your worth, Al.

Break out of the box, show us a new idea, follo up, make it real, and who knows what could happen in 2004.

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