An interesting interview with Al Gore (ABC News Video), discussing his film about climate change. I think the film itself opens in the UK in September. “Reality has a way of intruding on illusion,” he says.
Inevitably, he is asked about Iraq. “Truth is a career decision” for military officers and other officials [11:30] he remarks. Certainly, he’s got much better at creating sound-bites and dropping them in to interviews since his rather wooden campaign to be president. Of course, he stalls on the same question as all those who think the war shouldn’t have been fought: what should happen now? His instinct is for a speedy exit; he knows that the setting of deadlines or premature withdrawal will only create its own problems. As a result, this section of the interview is something of a mess. Not, perhaps, a problem if he really has no desire to run for president in 2008, but I’m sure that somewhere Republican interns are busy splicing together parts of this interview to make his stance seem utterly inconsistent – just in case.
Do have a look at 14:00 onwards, where there is a clip from a sketch he did for Saturday Night Live. The full clip is here. Nice to see that he has a sense of humour.