Actually, it's C-Span3.
He sounds great, and he's proposing some pretty bold things. Things he knows very well that nobody in the room with him has the political courage to even attempt.
The council looks bored, and a little pissed off.
I honestly wonder what his game is. He HAS to know that nobody is gonna touch anything he's talking about.
Now he's calling for required disclosure of carbon emissions for companies. Absolutely no one in the room is listening to a thing he's saying.
UPDATE: It's been a couple hours I've been watching this now. I'll admit a lot of this stuff is going over my head, but I'm struck by one thing, and that is that Al Gore is one smart motherfucker. I know that he's been talking about global warming for years now, so he's pretty much got this routine down, but he's also answering questions, and talking at length about world events (including things like policy minutia in China) that are only weeks old. And he's doing it all extemporaneously.
Anyway, I'm trying to think of ANYTHING that Bush could speak at such length on, let alone taking questions on it. ANYTHING. I honestly don't think he could do it. ANYTHING! Baseball? Cowboy boots? How about Texas? Could he talk for a couple hours about Texas, and then take some questions? I want to say yes, believe me I do. I want to believe that my president, whatever I think of his policies, can give a serious talk about SOMETHING, along the way telling me something I don't know. I'm not trying to Bush-bash here, I swear. But let's take Iraq. THE defining issue of Bush's presidency. Fast becoming the defining issue of my generation. Do you think that Bush could sit down before a committee and talk for two hours about Iraq? I do not think he could do it. I think he would peter out after 20 minutes, tops. And once people start to ask him questions about the details (like say, the difference between Sunnis and Shias) I think he would lose it. He would ask to be excused to go to the bathroom, then you'd here a car door slam, and tires peeling out, and that would be it.
Good Lord, now Gore just brought up Capt. William Anderson, who was the first one to break through the polar ice in a nuclear submarine. Apparrantly, Anderson just passed away. Gore is talking about the thickness of the ice shelf, but that is a pretty obscure name to throw out. (I happen to know a little bit about him) It wasn't even to prove a point. It was just a fact he threw out there. Anderson just died. The context was that he measured the ice.
I'm a pretty smart guy. I'm not the smartest guy, but I do okay. I've been known to finish the Friday NYT crossword puzzle in 20 minutes. (I'll see you in Stamford this weekend, Shortz!) But God DAMN it, I really want a president who is smarter than me. I do not believe Bush is smarter than me.
Whatever you think of him, Al Gore is the smartest guy in that room. No question.
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