“We don’t remake ourselves. Rarely am I so wrong as when I use that expression. Because obviously, yes, we can recover.
Act 2, take 1.
If Barack Obama was one of the darling of the recent COP26 in Glasgow, Al Gore was – once again – one of its great sages. The former Vice President of the United States is an environmental evangelist. He has been speaking publicly about the climate crisis since the 1970s.
Al Gore was predestined to be a statesman. His father, Albert Gore Sr., had been a congressman and then a senator for Tennessee. With his wife Pauline, he had drawn up a very precise plan for his son. It’s a canvas that Gore Jr. has executed almost perfectly, also moving from Congress to the Senate to finally reach the White House, in the shadow of Bill Clinton for eight years.
Then, in 2000, there was the contested presidential defeat against George W. Bush, following a recount that took more than a month. As a joke, Gore often says that he was once the next President of the United States. Defeated by 537 votes in Florida, the state that gave Bush the victory, this is more than a joke.
But instead of hanging on to the dream of one day becoming president, Al Gore left Washington to live his life – the real one, not the one his parents had hoped for. It’s as if defeat has finally given him the freedom to branch off expectations and their limits.
Al Gore’s second act is impressive. Now a full-time environmentalist, the young man in his seventies is also a successful investor who has amassed a fortune of over US $ 200 million, after having sold Current TV – the television channel he co-founded in 2005. He also won an Oscar in 2007 for the documentary An Inconvenient Truth, signed by Davis Guggenheim and based on the bestseller of the same name, written by the former vice president. Next will be a Nobel Peace Prize, a Grammy and an Emmy. Then, a consecration of a completely different range: the animation of an episode of Saturday Night Live.
In 2010, after 40 years of marriage, Gore and his wife Tipper separated. Beyond its longevity, it was the couple’s famous hug at the Democratic convention 10 years earlier that made the Gores a legendary couple. The cliché had traveled the world and reassured supporters. The Gore’s marriage was going well and better than the Clintons’ a few years earlier. Marital status is of great importance in American politics.
It serves as an essential lever in creating the image of candidates. By becoming single, Al Gore confirmed the extent of his transformation.
Intermission.
I have dreamed for years of producing a show called The interview that changed everything. Each episode would retrace the trajectory of a personality who was confused following a disastrous interview. There would be an episode on artist Kanye West. In 2018, during a tirade in the studios of the popular show TMZ, West had suggested that slavery – which lasted 400 years in the United States – was a choice for blacks. Despite many successes since, especially in business, West has never been able to fully recover from this gross silliness.
Then there would be an episode on Ted Kennedy, the former lion of the United States Senate. In 1979, a few months before the presidential election in the United States, everything presaged a duel between Kennedy and a certain Ronald Reagan. In an interview that will be broadcast on CBS, in the middle of the Democratic primary campaign, young journalist Roger Mudd asks Kennedy the simplest question: “Why do you want to be president?” Today, it is an answer to which any serious candidate can answer by heart. Kennedy was hesitant, and his almost interminable response was rambling and incoherent. There were other obstacles to his coronation, of course, but Ted Kennedy’s inability to answer this basic question was the most difficult to overcome.
After Kanye West and Ted Kennedy, there would be an episode on Mélanie Joly and her appearance on the show Everybody talks about it, in 2017.
Act 2, take 2.
PHOTO OLIVIER DOULIERY, ARCHIVES ASSOCIATED PRESS
Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on November 12
In 2017, Mélanie Joly was Minister of Canadian Heritage in Justin Trudeau’s first cabinet. To announce – sorry, to defend – his cultural policy and the thorny Netflix issue, Mr.me Joly was one of the guests of the essential Sunday meeting. Not mastering well enough certain complexities of the matter, the passage of the minister to the emission was catastrophic. The interview was parodied as well as the subject of many editorials. It was difficult for Mme Joly to get rid of it. The following year, she will be appointed – sorry, relegated – to the Ministry of Tourism. It is a less prestigious portfolio and, above all, far from the spotlight.
But Mélanie Joly did not arrive in this cabinet by magic, as she did not come second in the municipal elections in Montreal in 2013 by chance.
She is a hard worker and a fine strategist, who has the style and substance to succeed in politics. She used her successful stints in Tourism, Official Languages and then Economic Development to remind us and to rebuild her image.
If Al Gore once again shone at the most recent COP – not as a politician, but rather in his reincarnation as an activist -, Mr.me Joly, almost at the same time, was quite comfortable and in her place, alongside Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington. It was his first meeting as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Flanked by his new counterpart, Mr. Blinken expressed to journalists in front of them his delight at having met Mr.me Joly. For me, it’s a delight to see her go.
Al Gore and Mélanie Joly didn’t have to start over. But they both had to make an important pivot – that they each succeeded, in their own way. Yes, we can do it again. This is an important reminder, especially at the dawn of balance sheet season.