Much has been made of Al Gore's post-2000 rededication, specifically, to the cause of sane environmental policy and global warming awareness. In fact, most pieces that conclude that he won't run for the presidency again do so on the basis of his unrelenting drive in this area. He's found the passion that works for him, and he believes his current path is the best one to follow to achieve his goals.

The artistic, informational, commercial and politic success of An Inconvenient Truth (both the film and the book of the same name) has put him in the most advantageous position of his long pursuit on change when it comes to human activity and governmental policy that affects the climate. He made a splashy appearance before the House Energy and Commerce Committee today to talk about potential solutions to the crisis. He's even putting on a Live Aid-style event this summer to raise money for and the profile of the global warming issue.

Meanwhile, he's got another book coming out in May, which will presuming involve numerous promotional appearances, signings, talks, etc. The book could've been a Truth follow-up of some kind, but it's not, at least not in any linear sense. The book is called The Assault on Reason and it appears to be nothing like the autohagiographic campaign books that most candidates and would-be candidates write today.

Here's the description listed at Amazon:

I can't help but contrast this with Barack Obama's rather weak-kneed decrying of "the smallness of our politics." Here's a man who, in the middle of a very specific and detailed campaign to get the public to understand a sometimes confusing scientific issue, steps back and looks at the context the debate is taking place in. What he finds -- not at all surprisingly -- is that our culture is epistemologically poisoned. That finding is so much bigger than any one issue, including biggies such as global warming and Iraq, that I cannot help but see his timing in presenting it as the opening volley of a campaign not just for the presidency, but for a true cultural revolution. More to the point, this is a kind of leadership that we have not had in the United States since... maybe FDR? Maybe Lincoln? I don't mean to sound hyperbolic here, but I have to believe this is something that can change our system in ways that tweaking emissions standards or US Attorney confirmation rules or the earned-income tax credit can't.

For instance, middle-east "expert" and New York Times columnist Tom Friedman said again today that US forces have about six months to get things "working" in Iraq, or else. Friedman, you may recall, was a major booster of the war beforehand, and has declared "the next six months" to be crucial so many times since 2003 that the unit of measurement is now named for him. He is a joke (see Matt Taibbi's takedown for more), he has been wrong about any and everything to do with the war since before it began. He remains, inexplicably, a respected "expert" nonetheless, and has suffered no apparently consequences for his devastating wrongness. And he is not alone. Frankly, he is the product of a culture that does not value being right -- either before or after the fact -- but does value a) certitude, b) boldness, c) counterintuitiveness, and d) narcissism. The kind of leadership we need now is the kind that reconfigures our society so that the Tom Friedmans of the world come to account.