I was never much of an Al Gore fan.

I was unimpressed by him as a vice president, and I didn't like him at all as a presidential candidate. In 2000 I gave money to Bradley, then McCain, but never Gore (though in the end I of course voted for him over Bush).

I thought he did a foolish thing by disappearing from the discourse for a couple of years after the tied election; I felt he was giving up his chance to affect what was happening.

Well, both Al and I have changed a bit in the last couple of years.

J and I were in DC Sunday and attended his speech. It was, in a word, magnificent. In tone, in substance, in its use of historical context, and in its setting. If you weren't there, if you haven't seen it, you owe it to yourself to watch it (or at least read the transcript).

I would pull-quote pieces of it, but I would want to grab about a third. Just check it out.

And I think I better understand his initial withdrawal from the public eye: since Gore appearances are so rare, each gets more attention. And since they're spaced far apart, he has the time to craft speeches like this one which pull together many threads into a rock-solid, damning critique of the Bush administration.

Bravo.