I've worked with Gore, and he is the most technically savvy politician in Washington.
He was a key player in the publication of the Internet, and he keenly understands the need for liquid fuels to power transportation.
Liquid fuels? Why do we need that? His almost religious aversion to the Internal combustion engine is ridiculous. What we need is more energy efficient engines, as in energy (or perhaps quantity**location of air pollution, or CO2) per mile. The workings of such an engine should be left to the market. Some people don't understand that something needs to produce that extra electricity for hydrogen, and that that process might be less efficient than just using a fuel efficient engine, and that increased electricity production in some parts of the country (with grandfathered coal plants) might lead to even more air pollution. The idea of s zero emission engine is a joke.
I agree Gore is much more technically savvy than most politicians. And he is a decent person. But he has a fatal flaw. He doesn't delegate responsibility. He doesn't know how to take advise. And he is an intellectual tyrant. This drives good people off his staff. I know this because I grew up inside the beltway, and have met many such affected people.
I would much rather have a president who didn't know that Dhaka was the capital of Bangledesh, but who has assembled one of the best advisory teams in recent memory (Powell, Rice's Vulcan group, Goldsmith on domestic policy, and I forgot the name of the economic guy but I saw a very positive profile in the Economist). I don't know as much about W personally as I know about Gore, but if he does seem to have a good mix of pragmatism and principles.
The intellectual quality I respect most is common sense- an intuition almost. There are some people with reams of knowledge and logical firepower, but who go through life rudderless, casting one way or the next. They usually become lawyers. We don't need another in the Whitehouse. |
