Al, Barack and intelligent politics

Yesterday was the last day of the Democratic National Convention. It was taking place in a football stadium in Denver. It was the big night, the night of Barack's acceptance speech.

Before he accepted the nomination, though, in front of about 80,000 people, Al Gore, former Vice-President under Bill Clinton and loser/winner of the 2000 election, gave the best political speech of the Convention, which was full of good speeches, and probably one of the best speeches I have ever heard.

Al gave in to family-history-sentimentalism rhetoric for one minute only towards the end of his speech. The rest was real politics, intelligent, clear, progressive, honest, thoroughly addressing the issues that need to be addressed. Clearly, Al Gore does not intend to run for anything.
Yet, he should be president. Not only because he would have been if the American electoral system was not screwed up, but above all because he is an intelligent man, seems to know what he is talking about, and, yes, I give in to the fashionable word, he is inspiring. And I haven't even seen An Inconvenient Truth.

At some point, there was even a bizarre moment of Back-to-the-Future realization of everything that could/should have happened during the last eight years when he said what the country would have done instead of what it has done had he been the President. You know, in Back To The Future II, Marty's present is the 1980s. At the beginning of the movie, he goes to 2025 or something. Then he finds an almanach with all the sports results of the last half century. His bully -- I forget the name -- finds it and finds the time machine and goes back to the 1980s. When Marty finally returns to the 80s, his world has been completely transformed into an post-apocalyptic Springfield because the bully became super-rich thanks to the almanach and reigns over the town.
Well, I might be weird but that's what came to my mind yesterday when Al talked about what could have happened if his victory had not been stolen in 2000. I wanted to put him in a time machine, go with him, kill Florida, and see what happens!

The inconvenient truth is that Al is too smart to be elected. As LeAnn said, he gave a speech that Bush could not understand. And neither half of the voters. If Al had been running for President, that speeech would have been too smart, too high-brow, too "elitist," the Republicans would have said.

The man who recovered from a post-defeat-although-he-won-really depression by making a show of global warming and touring the world with it, was not in for the show last night. He was there for the indictment of the usurper of his position and to focus on the change they are all talking about.

Change, change, change!

For a long time during this campaign -- which officially only starts now for Barack by the way -- that is only what we could hear. Change! "Yes we can." Well, maybe for the first time as clearly, Barack Obama explained yesterday what change meant to him.
"I accept your nomination for the presidency of the United Sates," he started. And then, for the first time really, he explained why John would be a bad president, for the first ime really he indicted George W. Bush.

For the first time, he said to John: Cut the crap! Referring to the negative ads that his opponent keeps running, he made clear that yes he loves his country, yes he has enough experience, yes he can be commander-in-chief, yes this campaign deserves better than calling each other celebrities. John McCain, if you want to debate about what this election should be about, I'm ready!

And he said what he would do. Of course, it was an electoral speech, and he won't probably be able to do eveything he says he wants to do. But he gave specifics, and at least theoretically, it seems to be coherent and ideologically progressive.

I highly recomment the listening of these two speeches on the net. Go ahead, they are not boring.