On NPR's Diane Rehm show Friday, Time political reporter Karen Tumulty touted Al Gore's latest prize as part of a "remarkable story" about his "remarkable career," and how he's won just about every award you can win. Tumulty says all the "moral authority" he has gained from denouncing the Iraq war before it began could make a difference if he decided to endorse one of the Democratic presidential contenders.
It’s a quite remarkable story that you know, the Vice President after coming out of this traumatic election has built just a remarkable career for himself and really made a difference. But I’m sitting here trying to figure out what award he hasn’t won at this point. We have the Academy Award, the Emmy award, the Grammy award, the Webby award, and now this one.
After the other guests had a turn -- Jim Angle of Fox News and Paul Glastris of the liberal Washington Monthly -- Tumulty underlined Gore's new clout:
The Gore endorsement in 2004 didn’t do a whole lot for Howard Dean but create a lot of buzz for about a week. But I think that a lot has happened since then, and in particular what has happened is the fact that a lot of the Democratic base look at Al Gore, look at where he was on the war, and when. I mean, he gave one of the most forceful and passionate speeches of his life on the eve of the Iraq war and you know, overwhelming opinion in the country right now is that he was right. So I think that in a lot of ways, it would almost carry more of a moral authority even than it did four years ago.
Who would have thought Mr. "No Controlling Legal Authority" would be a man with massive "moral authority," at least in adoring liberal-media eyes?
This is nothing new for Tumulty, who previously puffed the Lord of the Lockbox as a "laptop-wielding ninja" against "the forces of greed and indifference."
