Unannounced Candidate Watch
Al Gore’s cult of personality (who would have written that seven years ago?) was on full display Tuesday night, as the former vice president gave a glorified book chat to a standing-room-only crowd at George
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Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium.
A crowd that ranged from students to octogenarians, blue-suited professionals to scruffy-looking hippies, heard Gore plug his new book, “The Assault on Reason,” which takes President Bush and others to task for their “lack of” reason.
The Politics & Prose-sponsored speech and book signing came across as a political rally, at least to those in the audience. “Draft Gore” buttons and “Gore ’08” stickers were nearly a required accessory, and the man himself enjoyed a 30-second standing ovation upon taking the stage.
The only one not playing along was Gore, who left it to the crowd to read between the lines for their partisan red meat in his professorial talk, which referenced Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, Edward Gibbon and the Bible.
Conducting “mass eavesdropping on American citizens … was a big mistake,” he said, in one of his biggest applause lines. “The decision of Congress to endorse it after the fact … was a bigger mistake.”
After some Q&A, the lectern was replaced by a table, and staffers called the crowd up row by row to have their books signed onstage.
Not that it wasn’t without restrictions. The former VP set strict guidelines for attendees to the event, which we reprint below:
1. Al Gore will not be available to field questions from the media.
2. Books will be distributed, per voucher, at the auditorium on the night of the event. Additional books will also be on sale the night of the event.
3. Limit one book per person during the signing following the talk.
4. Due to time constraints, and in an effort to have all books signed, only books distributed and sold at the event will be signed.
5. No memorabilia, photos or books brought to the event will be signed.
6. Vice President Gore will not personalize books.
7. No flash photography please.
