Al Gore’s Oscar ride was fun while it lasted.

For years now, the former vice president has been liked and disliked about equally by the American people.

Last year, for example, the Gallup polling organization found that 48 percent of those asked about Gore had a favorable opinion of him, while 45 percent had an unfavorable opinion. Back in 2002 and 2003, the numbers were almost exactly the same.

But a couple of weeks before the Feb. 25 Oscars ceremony, as the hype for Gore’s alarmist documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” began to build, the polls started to move in Gore’s favor.

In the second week of February, Gallup found that 52 percent of those surveyed viewed Gore favorably, while 45 percent viewed him unfavorably.

In the first days of March, shortly after Gore’s big night in Hollywood, 55 percent of those polled had a favorable opinion of him, while 39 percent had an unfavorable opinion.

Then, toward the end of March, the numbers ticked a bit higher: 56 percent favorable, 38 percent unfavorable.
Gore’s polls hadn’t been that good since 1999.  Democrats, including some who didn’t belong to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, pined for Gore to enter the race.

But it couldn’t last.

In a Gallup survey taken in early April, Gore’s favorable rating slipped to 50 percent, and his unfavorable rose to 44 percent.

Now, in a poll taken a few days ago, he’s fallen a little more — 48 percent favorable, 47 percent unfavorable.
And that means Al Gore is pretty much right where he was before the publicity campaign for “An Inconvenient Truth.”

That’s certainly bad for Gore, but it’s hard to say what it means for the only candidate in the Democratic race who has an unfavorable rating higher than his: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

In the latest Gallup poll, 45 percent of those surveyed had a favorable opinion of her, while 52 percent viewed her unfavorably.

That’s bad, even for Hillary Clinton. Just last month her favorables outweighed her unfavorables, 54 percent to 42 percent.

Gore’s slide is probably good news, of a sort, for Sen. Clinton, because a lot of people who say they support Gore for president would throw their support to Clinton if Gore stayed out of the race.

When Gallup includes Gore among the candidates, Clinton leads the Democratic field with 31 percent, while 26 percent support Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), 16 percent support John Edwards, and 15 percent support Gore.
Everybody else is way back — way, way back — with New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson leading the single-digit field at 3 percent.

If Gore is not included in the polling question, Sen. Clinton does significantly better. In that scenario, 37 percent support Clinton, while 29 percent support Obama and 19 percent support Edwards.

So the more unpopular Gore is, and thus the more likely he is to stay out of the race, the better things are for Sen. Clinton.

On the other hand, voters are perfectly capable of disliking Hillary Clinton and Al Gore simultaneously, and the fact that they might increasingly dislike Gore doesn’t mean that they will increasingly like Sen. Clinton.
And of course, it’s possible that both their unfavorables would climb higher were Gore to enter the Democratic race. That might create a kind of negative synergy, as voters look at Gore and Clinton — and decide they just don’t want the old 1990s crowd back in the White House.

Now that’s an inconvenient truth.

York is a White House correspondent for
National Review. His column appears in The Hill each week.
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