Larry Beinhart on Al Gore:

But how does he get the media to pay attention to such speeches?

In that narrow context, the quality of the speech doesn’t matter. The quality of the reasoning, the insights, the clarity, the fervor in the speaker’s voice, the vividness of the images and metaphors, the truths or falsehoods contained therein – none of that matters much at all.

What matters is the standing of the person making the speech. “Standing,� for these purposes, means one thing: the ability to act upon what you have to say. Thus, almost anybody in the administration – not just the president - the vice-president, secretary of state, speaker of the house, majority leader of the senate – has more standing than Al Gore does. If they say something it means that there will be at least an attempt to carry it out or that it is an elucidation of what is already being carried out, and it is therefore newsworthy.

How do does Gore achieve standing? The answer is obvious. He must start running for president.

A person credibly and seriously running for president is someone who will, if he wins, get to implement the things he has spoken of. Therefore, he is someone who needs to be listened to, whose words need to be reported.

Al Gore may not want to run for president. He is among the few people on earth who knows how hard it is and how heartbreaking it is to lose – and worse – to win and have it stolen from him.

The last time he ran there was no apparent reason to do so, except that he had ambition and it was something he was more or less born to do, like a Kennedy, a Roosevelt and a Bush. Now there is a reason to run. Because he has enunciated a set of principles and ideas to run on. Because America needs to hear what he has to say. Because no one else of standing and stature has come forward to say it.

If he doesn’t have the stomach for it, well then, it was a nice speech, glad he made it, but I’m sorry he doesn’t really care enough to make a difference. But frankly, I hope he does care enough. We don’t need fence straddlers, we don’t need a Democan or Republicrat, we don’t need a more sensible Bush and a Cheney with compassion. Which is to say, we don’t need Hillary Clinton or John Kerry. We need a person of clear conviction. Who has reasons to run, besides, “I wanna be president.� Al Gore has just established himself as that man.