by David Nitkin
It should be interesting inside the White House on Monday, Nov. 26, when the contestants in the close-as-can-be 2000 presidential election come face to face.
The White House announced today that President Bush will host and congratulate Nobel Prize winners from the U.S. on that date.
No doubt that Bush is looking forward to meeting Leonid Hurwicz, Eric S. Maskin and Roger B. Myerson, who won the 2007 prize for economics. Two of the three medicine prize winners are also U.S. citizens.
But an inconvenient truth is that most of the public’s attention will be paid to Al Gore, the former vice president who shared the Peace Prize with a group of scientists working under the auspices of the United Nations for research into global climate change.
The Bush administration has come under criticism for not taking prompt action to control greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. Chances are if Gore raises the issue with the president whom he narrowly lost to when the U.S. Supreme Court decided that Florida’s electoral votes should go to Bush, he’ll be leaving the PowerPoint demonstration in Nashville.
David Nitkin covers the White House for the Baltimore Sun, a Tribune Co. newspaper.