[Asclepius]

He seems born for the world of think tanks and schoolrooms, of dissertations and seminars, of endless digressions about this and that.

I disagree. Yes, Gore can cite authors and string together references. Only he does so with no discipline or sense of direction; he does so associatively, almost randomnly. In other words, he seems to like to read and listen, but he has no idea how to apply or process what knowledge he consumes: he thinks-acts-writes-speaks like an undergraduate trying to impress a professor with how much he knows.

[AQGeiger]

I disagree. Yes, Gore can cite authors and string together references. Only he does so with no discipline or sense of direction; he does so associatively, almost randomnly. In other words, he seems to like to read and listen, but he has no idea how to apply or process what knowledge he consumes: he thinks-acts-writes-speaks like an undergraduate trying to impress a professor with how much he knows.

Actually, you are describing in perfect detail all of my humanities professors in college. They would just ramble on from one idea to another, and apparently we were supposed to see the grand connection between them, but to this day I suspect that it's just the way Ph.D.s love to convince themselves of how smart they are. And that's most of the reason why I so despised my humanities courses.

I think Gore would have been very happy as a college professor. He could ramble on all day about how brilliant he is, never having to make any sense, and he'd have hordes of liberal college kid groupies.