‘Some oil companies see me as an enemy’
It isn’t easy to put oneself in Al Gore’s shoes. In 2000, he won a majority of votes in the US presidential election, only to be defeated just a few days later. He has changed a lot since I last saw him in 1998: He has put on weight, and his manner is heavier too. He almost seems irritated by questions that take him back to that painful electoral showdown with George W. Bush. I met with him during his brief visit to Athens, and wondered how different it would have been had he been elected president. The US Embassy kept a discreet but polite distance from the event, and his security detail was strictly Greek, without the involvement of the US Secret Service. A single, young assistant followed Gore everywhere, rather than the scores of officials who accompany a president. Straightforward, a little stiff, Gore seems impassioned, not only when he talks about the environment, but also when he criticizes Bush’s mistakes, mainly in Iraq. Asked if he’s interested in the presidency, he says he’s not: «I have not ruled out the possibility of running again at some point in the future, but I doubt that that will happen.» Gore has come to love Greece. His friends say he «found himself again» after the shock of 2000 when he vacationed on Crete as a guest of banker Minos Zombanakis. He seems to have found his role outside the narrow confines of politics. He enjoys his rock-star status in relation to the environment and feels that there is life after politics.
