Public intellectual. Most people don’t
have a clear-cut answer to what the word means. Is it someone who is famous,
someone who went to Harvard? When originally asked what a public intellectual was a few weeks
ago, I was at a complete loss for an answer. I asked my friends, I looked it up
online, but still, the concept of who a “public intellectual” is evaded me.
According to Stephen
Mack’s blog post “The Decline of Public Intellectuals?” there are a few
different ways to determine if someone is a public intellectual. The most
important thing to remember when scrutinizing a public intellectual is that “the measure of public intellectual work is not whether the people are
listening, but whether they’re hearing things worth talking about.” In essence, anyone can become an expert on a certain subject, many can be
published but not everyone can talk about something that is worth hearing.
Al Gore is certainly someone who has something worth
hearing. The former Vice President
has been interested in environmental issues ever since his mother read him
Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring.
This book, one of the original works published on the subject of
environmentalism, sparked his interest in conservationism. Living on a farm at
a young age, he was able to experience the ways in which the environment
affects agrarian lifestyles first hand. He
thus had a unique connection to the environment that he later pursued through
public policy.
He went on to receive
his bachelors degree from Harvard University in 1969. At Harvard, he had the chance to be
influenced by professor Roger Revelle, who was one of the first people to
monitor rising amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and warned of global
warming. Revelle’s philosophies are apparent in the future legistlature that
Gore proposed during his time both as senator and as Vice President. Gore’s
early interest in the environment, paired with the influence of his professors
at Harvard and later on at both the Vanderbilt School of Religion and the
Vanderbilt Law School, paved the way for his position in politics as an
environmental activist.
However, he presents an interesting case for the scope
of a public intellectual because his career trajectory has led him to be not only a public intellectual but
also a political figurehead. His position as a political figure forces him to
compromise his ideals as a public intellectual and he can be seen putting aside
his main ideas at times in order to appeal to the public constituency.
During an
unsuccessful presidential run in 1988, Al Gore established himself as an
environmental policy expert.
“His speeches were ignored by the press-which
dismissed thinning ozone as too exotic to interest the electorate ("not
even peripheral," scoffed columnist George Will)-and were ridiculed by
fellow Democrats who at one point said he sounded as if he were running for
national scientist”
In 1988, there was
not a receptive audience to environmental issues. There were “bigger” issues at
hand, such as an AIDS epidemic. Al Gore also came off as TOO smart, talking
about issues that the common man couldn’t understand. He ultimately dropped out
of the race.
Following the unsuccessful
run, Gore returned to his position as Senator and continued working on environmental
issues. While he had less opportunity to speak publicly about the issues than
when he was running for president, he made sure to make up for it by involving
himself in environmental policymaking. He chaired the Senate’s environmental
and energy study conference and wrote legislation, including the 1989 World
Environmental Policy Act which called for a ban on
chlorofluorocarbons, blamed for depleting the ozone layer of the Earth's
atmosphere.
Looking at Gore’s
actions, we can see that our notions of
the public intellectual need to focus less on who or what a public intellectual
is—and by extension, the qualifications for getting and keeping the title. Instead, we need to be more concerned with
the work public intellectuals must do, irrespective of who happens to be doing
it. Gore is an active public intellectual. He was able to make tangible
changes in order to advance his cause and his actions speak louder than words
in this case. He has been able to take something he is passionate about and
turn himself into an expert on it.
His passion extended
as far as to write a book on environmentalism. In 1992, Gore’s first book
“Earth In The Balance” was published while he was serving as senator of
Tennessee. The book, applauded because it was actually written by Gore himself,
marked Gore’s foray into the public sphere as a public intellectual. The book largely discusses the Gore-created
“Global Marshall Plan.”
The plan is loaded with new programs and major
policy changes. Each of its five strategic goals-such as stabilizing world
population and ramrodding development of alternative technologies-is supported
by a detailed set of enabling policy changes.
A “Global Marshall
Plan” gave Gore a leg to stand on. By having a list of policies he hoped to
enact, he gave the public a way to actually solve the problem. Backing it up
with evidence, Gore was able to show his prowess as an expert on the subject.
He was such an expert
that he was able to write the book while still being senator. It was the first
book ever to be written by a sitting senator and was published months before
his election as the Vice President of the United States. He was able to
establish himself as an intellectual because he had a published piece of work
and an audience to back him up. His work also gave him a tangible plan to take
with him throughout his political endeavors and shows his plans to be an active
participant in changing environmental policy.
The timing of the
book, however, illustrates just how tangled up Gore was as an elected official
and as a public intellectual. Having his book published while he was a senator
made his two different public personas visible on a much grander scale. His ultimate
career concern was to get reelected as senator (and later on, elected as vice
president), yet his first presidential campaign was unsuccessful on the basis
that he isolated the constituency through his extreme focus on the environment.
Subsequently, he had to
approach environmental issues during his campaigns very carefully. After all, “A public intellectual is not a paid
publicist, not a spinner, not in the pocket of a narrowly defined purpose. It
is, of course the temptation, another one, of the public intellectual to cozy
up to that which he or she should be evaluating critically.”
Al Gore being a
politician would imply that he was cozying up to what he should be evaluating
critically. His direct involvement in the policymaking process makes many
skeptical of his status as a public intellectual because his decisions have to be
dictated by the line of his political party in order to be reelected. He
managed to be elected as Vice President in November of 1992 without isolating
voters.
During his time as
vice president, his book was put to the side and wound up even going out of
print. He kept an environmental focus when it came to policy making, but failed
to implement the plan he outlined in his book. Instead, he worked vigorously to urge increased spending on the drug war and on the Superfund, a
federal program to clean up the environment.
His biggest championship during his vice presidency,
however, has to be the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol introduces more
powerful and legally binding measures for the reduction of global greenhouse
gas emissions. This
resolution came as part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change in 1997. He was one of the main global leaders pushing for this protocol
to be accepted and it went into effect in 2005 when the remaining countries
finally ratified it.
While the Kyoto
Protocol was a big accomplishment for Gore, his original idea for the Global
Marshall Plan was not discussed much in his vice presidency. It began
resurfacing as Gore made his run for president in 2000. He ultimately had a
more receptive audience to his plan but they were honestly more interested in “the attention placed on local
environmental problems such as where to put the new landfill, where to build a
new incinerator, who's polluting the lake and how can it be stopped.” Al
Gore had to use his status as a public intellectual to push people to discuss
bigger issues involving the environment than just what is going on in their
backyard.
All of this
ultimately calls into question how one can be both a public intellectual and a
politician at the same time. Are they each mutually exclusive? Or can you be
both the Vice President of the United States and a public intellectual?
After all, it is hard
to keep up writing new material when you have numerous other responsibilities. From 1992 until 1997, Al Gore published no new
material on the environment. And as Stephen Mack points out, “if public intellectuals have any role to
play in a democracy—and they do—it’s simply to keep the pot boiling.” While
Gore was able to keep the pot boiling politically by speaking out for policy
changes, his status as a public intellectual remained stagnant during his term
in office without the publication of new material.
By keeping the public
active through policy reform but not continuing to present new findings, Al
Gore essentially took a break from his position as a public intellectual.
Following his second unsuccessful run for presidency in 2000, Al Gore went back
to writing new material on environmentalism and became a more well known
environmental expert because of his work with the documentary “An Inconvenient
Truth.”
It can be seen
through Al Gore that it is nearly impossible to be both a public intellectual
and a politician at the same time. The two roles simply conflict with each
other. A politician, though well educated, is stuck operating within party
lines while a public intellectual shouldn’t have a connection to any bigger
organization because it would risk their credibility being questioned. And the
last thing a public intellectual wants is someone to question whether the
information was manipulated to reach an ultimate political goal.
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