'Meet the Press' transcript for July 20, 2008

MR. BROKAW:  Let me ask you about your attitude toward politics these days.

VICE PRES. GORE:  Mm-hmm.

MR. BROKAW:  I was a little surprised.  You're a man who was in politics at the highest level in this country...

VICE PRES. GORE:  Mm-hmm.

MR. BROKAW:  ...in the House of Representatives and the Senate, vice president for eight years, and yet you said recently, "What politics has become requires a level of tolerance for triviality and artifice and nonsense that I have found in short supply." Is that the right kind of signal to send to the young people of this country who, more than any time in recent memory, are deeply involved in the political decisions that we're making this year and young people who want to get into the political arena, look to Al Gore, and he said it's all about trivia and nonsense.

VICE PRES. GORE:  Well, no.  I, I--that quote you used was about my own personal tolerance for--bear in mind, I was in the political process for almost 30 years.  And no, I encourage young people to get involved.  And public service is an honorable calling, and, and I'm very excited, by the way, about the fact that millions of young people, who haven't been involved in the past, are now getting involved, many of them for Senator Obama, of course. And, and I think that's exciting.

I do think, Tom, that we have a very serious set of problems affecting our democracy--the role of big money, the role of lobbyists, the role of special interests.  It's a very serious problem for our democracy.  I think that the new Internet-based forms of organizing and mobilizing people--and that's what's gotten a lot of these young people involved--offer a real ray of hope. I'm optimistic.  But I think my best role is to try to help that bring--come, come to pass and to focus on enlarging the political space so that we can start focusing on real solutions and not these gimmicks.

MR. BROKAW:  With all due respect, Mr. Vice President, I can already hear your critics--and I don't do Rush Limbaugh, so I will not attempt to.  But I can hear him saying on the radio, "Well, there's Prince Albert.  There he was, 25 years hanging out with lobbyists, raising big money.  Then he lost, and now he's above the process."

VICE PRES. GORE:  Well...

MR. BROKAW:  "He finds it trivial and nonsensical."

VICE PRES. GORE:  ...I'm not saying I'm above the process.  I was in it for a long time.  And when I first was elected 32 years ago, I called for full public financing of every federal election.  I introduced legislation and proposed that every year...

MR. BROKAW:  And yet your guy, Obama, has...

VICE PRES. GORE:  ...I was in, in Congress.

MR. BROKAW:  And your guy, Obama, has turned it down.  He said he was for public financing, and now he's decided to stay in the private sector.

VICE PRES. GORE:  Well, there's a new reality now with the Internet-based small donor playing the dominant role.  And I think that's another example of how the Internet has helped to bring about some positive changes that can give us a way to break the back of the special interest dominance that we have in government today.

MR. BROKAW:  Let me ask you about your personal lifestyle, because it's been the subject of a lot of dialogue on the blogs, as you know.  You and Tipper have bought a big home outside of Nashville, and you had it retrofitted.  But for a time there was a comparison between what the president has in Texas at his home as being more environmentally correct than your home.  The Building Green Council gave you its second highest award.  But Stephen Smith, who is with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, is troubled by the scale of your home.  He said, "We all need to evaluate what we ...  need in square footage." Present company included.  We all have to look at scale, don't we?  Why was it necessary for you to have a 10,000 square foot home?  Because that is going to be more energy intensive than a smaller home for just the two of you.

VICE PRES. GORE:  Well, there--I don't claim to be perfect, and all of us who care about this issue are, are trying to do our part, but I, I will say this. We buy green energy.  The issue is carbon.  The issue is carbon, and we have, essentially, a carbon-free home.  We buy from wind energy and solar energy. Our roof is covered with solar electric panels, a geothermal system with all these deep wells, and we cut our natural gas bill by 90 percent, and I'm, I'm--we're, we're walking the walk and not just talking the talk.  There are always people who are going to try to aim at the messenger if they don't like the message, and I don't claim to be perfect, but we are walking the walk.

MR. BROKAW:  How often do you fly on a private jet?

VICE PRES. GORE:  I've--much more frequently on public transportation.  I'm flying on Southwest Airlines again today.  But sometimes the schedule requires that, and sometimes I do that.

MR. BROKAW:  Should there be a surcharge on jet fuel, cost for private aviation, which is expanding exponentially in this country, and it leaves a very large carbon footprint.

VICE PRES. GORE:  Fine by me.  Sounds like a good idea.

MR. BROKAW:  Let me ask you as well about what's going on in Congress right now.  There's a big debate under way about whether we should have offshore drilling, and Ken Conrad, a Democrat from North Dakota, whose credentials no one has to question, within his own party is leading a bipartisan effort to have offshore drilling.  He comes from a small rural state where energy costs have had a big impact on everything from agriculture to the, to the shop owner on Main Street.  Why shouldn't there be, in a transition period, more drilling offshore with the technology that we now have that has demonstrated in almost 50 years that we've not had any kind of a significant spill off the coast of this country?

VICE PRES. GORE:  Well, we, we already have offshore drilling in the areas where it does make sense, and there are already leased lots and lots of other offshore sites that could be drilled in.  There's a shortage of drill rigs and engineers, and they're, they're, they're going full out now.  But the areas that are protected now are protected for a reason.  The coastal economy has been hurt in the past by oil spills, and I think states like California should have the right to protect the, the areas that they know are in danger.  But the larger point is this, Tom.  It...

MR. BROKAW:  But if Florida approves it, do you think that they should be allowed to drill?

VICE PRES. GORE:  I think that the areas that have environmental values and economic values connected to the environment at stake should be protected. And the larger reason why is even if they went in that direction, everybody acknowledges, it would have zero impact on gasoline prices or oil prices. It's a drop in the bucket that would pose high risk of very important values. It wouldn't even start until 10 or 15 years from now and would likely to be--likely be sold to China anyway.  And going back over and over and over again to the old ways of the past just puts off the reckoning with the, the opportunity that we need to seize now to shift over to renewable sources of energy.

People used to propose cures for hangovers by having what they call the "hair of the dog that bit you," just more in the morning.  Well, we've got a big hangover right now because oil is so high in price, so much of it comes from overseas.  The climate crisis is really the heart of this.  This is no joke, Tom.  You said in your intro that there's some debate about how real it is. There's really not a debate in the mainstream scientific community.  It is the most serious threat that our civilization has ever faced.  Look at the fires out in California right now.  Look at the epic flooding in the Midwest.  Look at the stronger storms, and all predicted.  The, the entire North Polar ice cap, Tom.  Been there three million years, it's the size of the lower 48 states, and the scientists now say that there's a 75 percent chance it'll be completely gone during the summer in, in as little as five years.  This is happening on our watch.  We have got to respond.

MR. BROKAW:  Well, I'm--the indication that I gave at the beginning was not that it's not real.  I think that there is a growing and vast majority of people who believe it's real.  The question is to what degree and how quickly is it coming, and what can we do about it?

VICE PRES. GORE:  Well, we're getting...

MR. BROKAW:  I think it's fair to say that even within the scientific community there's a debate about that, because I've been tracking this issue pretty carefully.

VICE PRES. GORE:  Well, I, I mean, I think there's a consensus now that it's happening even more rapidly than the scientists were telling us years ago. We're seeing record high temperatures.  Nine of the 10 hottest years ever recorded have, have been in the last couple of decades.  We're seeing the stronger storms.  We're seeing the damage that, that people--and our national security experts--the military intelligence, the Pentagon, the National Intelligence Defense Council--they have warned us about the national security threats from potentially hundreds of millions of climate refugees caused by the climate crisis.  This is really--just this, this past week, the EPA said the American way of life is threatened.

MR. BROKAW:  The health of individuals could be affected.

VICE PRES. GORE:  That's correct.  Because tropical diseases that have never been known in the United States are now beginning to move northward into our country as the temperatures increase.  These fires--let me come back to that briefly--scientists are now saying that for every one degree increase in temperature, there's a 10 percent increase in lightning strikes.  And with the, the, the drying of the vegetation, the dry trees and the ones killed by these beetles that are on the rampage with the warmer temperatures.

MR. BROKAW:  Let me ask you some other questions.  We can't ignore the political climate that exists today.  When was the last time you talked to Bill and/or Hillary Clinton?

VICE PRES. GORE:  Couple months ago, and I consider them both good friends. And they--she ran an amazing campaign.

MR. BROKAW:  Do you think she was treated unfairly because she is a woman?

VICE PRES. GORE:  Well, I think that women often face these kinds of challenges, of course, in our--in our society.  But I think that she did an amazing job in changing that, as I think Senator Obama and Bill Richardson, where Hispanics are concerned, also made it possible for our country to move on into the 21st century and say, "Wait a minute, these old things that held us down in the past, we're, we're now within sight of a time where we can beyond that."

MR. BROKAW:  You've had some tough things to say about this president.  You called him a "moral coward," as I indicated earlier.  You said he betrayed this country by leading us into war in Iraq.  You also said that he acted illegally in warrantless wiretaps.  He received you at the White House in November of last year with Nobel Laureates.  If you don't want to be involved in politics as usual anymore, why didn't you bring that up to him at that point?

VICE PRES. GORE:  Oh, well, first of all, all three of those quotes were from some years ago, and I think--I've thought for some time now that...

MR. BROKAW:  Do you think he's gotten better since you made those quotes?

VICE PRES. GORE:  No, I didn't say that.  Maybe I've gotten better in not, in not saying things in exactly that way.

MR. BROKAW:  But if you felt strongly--if you felt strongly about it and you went out and said that about him in public arenas and then you go into the Oval Office.

VICE PRES. GORE:  Well, of course not.  I mean, it was very nice of him to, to ask me there.  And I talked to him about the climate crisis.  I'm not going to start by, by...

MR. BROKAW:  You're going to try to win him over.

VICE PRES. GORE:  ...with a verbal slap-down and say, "Now, let's talk." That doesn't make any sense.

MR. BROKAW:  If you were still in the United States Senate, would you want your friend Joe Lieberman to be in the Democratic Caucus?

VICE PRES. GORE:  Oh, I'm going to leave that to the Democratic senators. I...

MR. BROKAW:  Are you disappointed in Senator Lieberman?

VICE PRES. GORE:  I certainly disagree with many of the positions that he's taken, but I strongly agree with many others, you know.  He has been a leader on the environmental crisis, on a woman's right to, to choose and many, many other issues that don't often get attention when people get riled up about where he has...

MR. BROKAW:  So he's still your friend.

VICE PRES. GORE:  ...strayed from the flock.

MR. BROKAW:  He's still your friend.

VICE PRES. GORE:  Yes, indeed.

MR. BROKAW:  What did you think of this cover on The New Yorker.  This is Michelle Obama and Senator Obama.

VICE PRES. GORE:  Yeah.

MR. BROKAW:  David Remnick has strongly defended it as political satire because he said that's how a lot of conservatives...

VICE PRES. GORE:  Yeah.

MR. BROKAW:  ...have been characterizing them.  And the report inside was extremely well researched and well reported about his political roots in Chicago.

VICE PRES. GORE:  Yeah.  That's an interesting debate.  Tipper and I were talking about it last night.  I really love David Remnick and The New Yorker and satire has a--an honored place in our political dialogue.  I thought that was way too far over the top.  And I--freedom of the press, they can do what they want, but I thought it was way too far over the top, myself.  But, but you know, when you're dealing with humor in, in politics, a lot of us have had times when we, you know, you, you have to calibrate just--as, I forget who it was who said a joke is a serious thing.  You have to be really careful.

MR. BROKAW:  Mr. Vice President, thank you very much for being with us.

VICE PRES. GORE:  Thank you, Tom.

MR. BROKAW:  Coming up next, our Decision 2008 political roundtable.  NBC's David Gregory and political director Chuck Todd.

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