He’s a fat and happy Nobel winner and he should never run for office again.

Al Gore is clearly really good at being a human on a mission to save the planet but, for most of the same reasons he’s good at that, he is bad at being a presidential candidate. He won but lost the election in 2000 the same way he won but lost all of his debates with Bush. Impossible but true. On the matter of global warming and staving off climactic apocalypse, he is the right messenger: an authoritative populist translator of scientific theory, didactic but with reason, stuffy but in a professorial way that suits the topic. He is at ease on the slide-show circuit in a way he never was on the stump, despite his long and overwhelmingly successful political career. He looks right with his charts and graphs. His conviction in the worthiness of the global-warming mission shines through. He seemed by comparison basically disgusted to be having to debate taxes and abortion and so on with men like Bush. It was beneath him, as it would be beneath most people with an education and a sense of personal dignity. He couldn’t do it and that turned people off. Gore is now who he was meant to be. It’s uplifting to see a grown man so publicly come into his own. What is more, he has become a greater and more valuable ambassador for his country than he ever was as a politician. Congratulations to Al Gore.

Now everyone stop speculating on his political future. Stop asking him to run for president. We need him to continue to just be Al— big eater, author, happy champion of the planet and Nobel Peace Prize winner!

Tags: al gore, nobel prize