This is interesting.
"They both call. And I appreciate that fact," Gore said on the CBS television program "60 Minutes" last week.
Obama, the Democratic front-runner, says he keeps in regular contact with Gore and has pledged to make him a major player on global warming in an Obama administration.
"I will make a commitment that Al Gore will be at the table and play a central part in us figuring out how we solve this problem," Obama said.
Clinton told reporters she did not know whether Gore wanted to get back into government but was sure the American people would welcome it.
"I am very dependent upon the work that Al Gore has done for so many years on behalf of climate change," she said.
Gore's spokeswoman, Kalee Kreider, declined to comment on the Obama offer and was complimentary about the presidential candidates, including Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
"Former Vice President Gore thinks that both candidates are very strong. Both of them have offered plans to address the climate crisis ... as has Senator McCain," she said.
"It's a real turnaround to have candidates on both sides of the aisle offering, you know, solutions and plans to the climate crisis."
I find this to be a very irritating argument from Kreider and Gore, who know very well that McCain's political base is not interested in climate change legislation. The deniers are going to move to become delayers, and that's the argument we're going to have to fight. But I also get why Gore wants to take McCain in good faith, since he feels it's important to hold people accountable to the words they utter on the campaign trail. Of course, George W. Bush promised to tackle climate change, and didn't.
McCain is using an old trick, and a very annoying and transparent one. Early in this primary season, I heard a lot of discussion about how Gore should run, that he's a better candidate now that he's free of the consultants. I think what this proves is that he was never a good candidate, he never liked partisan give-and-take, and he never wanted to deal with the right-wing as it actually is, a toxic swamp of bad faith dishonesty. This 'both sides of the aisle' stuff might work one day, but there's zero evidence that it makes sense as a political strategy. The party of George W. Bush just does not deserve the presumption of good faith.
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