What a Difference Six Years Make

[[M I R T H]] * This video has to rank as one of the funniest, most spirit-lifting things I’ve seen in a very, very long time. Last night, Al Gore, the ex-vice president and former (and possibly future) Democratic presidential candidate, delivered a pseudo-Oval Office address to kick off NBC’s Saturday Night Live show. Flanked by American flags, with photos of his family prominently in the background, Gore, speaking as if he’d been sworn in as president in 2001, looked back upon the first six years of his administration. It was a bravura performance, one that could only have been delivered by somebody fully confident of his place in the world. In the course of it, he lampooned his own environmental efforts (“In the last six years we have been able to stop global warming. No one could have predicted the negative results of this. Glaciers that once were melting are now on the attack.”), remarked on what might have happened had the United States not made war on Iraq (“[W]e’re already so loved by everyone in the world that American tourists can’t even go over to Europe anymore ... without getting hugged.”), and archly criticized Bush’s warrantless domestic spying operations by imagining Dubya as baseball commissioner, having to deal with a steroid scandal (“I have faith in baseball commissioner George W. Bush when he says, ‘We will find the steroid users if we have to tap every phone in America!’”).

But I don’t want to spoil Gore’s deadpan gig for you. Go watch it for yourself. Now!