An evening with Al Gore
A couple of weekends ago, our good friend Leah called me up in a bit of a tizzy. Leah works in the campaign office for Jeff Merkley, the Democrat's Oregon candidate for the US Senate, and needed my help in a hurry. Her usual graphic designer had gone AWOL and they needed some posters and postcards for a huge campaign event – Al Gore was coming to town to talk and endorse Jeff – and they were needed yesterday. Could I help? Never one to let a friend down, I stepped up to the plate and produced the material n record time. The front of the postcard is above... not ground-breaking work, but it does the job and was commented on favourably by all parties.
Leah, recognising my hard work, went to her boss and asked that he pay me for my work. However, asking a campaign manager for money for what they consider to be "volunteer work" a few weeks out from election day tends to be a fruitless exercise – how can you pay for all those interminable TV spots if you're handing cash over to some graphic designer? Leah stuck to her guns, saying that I had have earned something for my work, and in the end managed to score Christine and I free tickets to the event. And not just any tickets, these were "have your photo taken with Al Gore before the show" tickets, which were being offered to the public for the tidy sum of $1000 a head.
I'll admit that initially I was quite bemused by the offer of the tickets: while I admire Al Gore, especially for what he's done outside of politics regarding climate change, I felt a little distanced from him, like I didn't know enough about him to deserve the chance to meet him. However, by the morning of the event, I was pretty excited.
We both dressed up for the event – it's not often you meet ex-Vice Presidents and you'd like to look your best – and headed down to the Convention Center after work. We found Leah soon after arriving and she made sure that we got what she had promised us. Another volunteer only wanted to give us general admission tickets – Leah was having none of that! Pretty soon, we were lining up with all the others to meet Mr. Gore, but we were waiting for almost an hour. Christine's (very cute) shoes weren't designed for standing around in for so long and the small waiting room got hot very quickly. Surprisingly, for a $1000 price tag, there was no food and drink available for the people waiting, but everyone was extremely happy and patient.
Finally, we were told that Al Gore was on his way down and to form a queue. As the event was starting soon, we would only have time to greet him, shake his hand and have our photo taken - no time for chit chat or political discourse! We gradually made our way into the room where the photos were being taken, and we were both struck by his immediate presence: he's a tall, barrel-chested man with an extremely calm demeanour, which seemed to affect everyone in the room. When it was our turn, he somehow managed to make us both feel very welcome with just a few words and a confident handshake. I wasn't starstruck by him, but he definitely has an aura. Photo taken (it's going to be emailed to us soon!), we headed into the auditorium to hear people speak.
The first few speakers were other Democrat candidates for all sorts of public offices (Americans vote for everything all at once on Election Day), who all exhorted us to vote Democrat all the way down the ballot. Some of them tried a bit of cheerleading... "Who are you going to vote for??!!" and expecting everyone to chant "Merkley!!!" back at them, which frankly, was a little embarrassing. That kind of stuff is best left to high schools, football games or rallies with around 50,000 people.
Jeff's speech was somewhat better, but everyone else's words were forgotten the moment Al Gore came to the stage. His speech was amazing, there's no other way to describe it. Powerful, thought-provoking, funny... tying together the economic crisis, alternative energy, the war in Iraq and more into a tangible and spell-binding narrative, all of them giving reasons to vote for Jeff Merkley. Easily one of the best political speeches I have ever heard and totally inspiring. Listening to him speak like that, one can't help but wonder how different a place the world might be now if he had won that election eight years ago... I certainly can't imagine that he would have reacted to world events in the same way that the Bush administration has...
Posted in: chaosboy, politics, portland, united states on October 25, 2008 at at 8:28:00 AM