Lights, Camera, Al Gore!

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Since leaving politics, there's something Gore appears to have discovered he is very good at, and that is earning a living. Friends say he has come to enjoy the luxury of a private life. He has a busy schedule on the lecture circuit, earning as much as $150,000 a speech. The technophile former Vice President has been a part-time adviser to Google since 2001, and while he refuses to say how he is compensated, the guessing in Washington is that Gore has accumulated a hefty chunk of its stock. Forbes magazine reports that the 60,000 options he holds in Apple Computer, where he is on the board, are worth $2 million.

Current TV, the youth-oriented cable network that Gore launched last August, has been picked up by Comcast for its digital tier, and will reach 28 million homes as of this week, says Gore's business partner Joel Hyatt. The network is in negotiations with cable systems in France, Germany and Italy, and expects to achieve the relatively rare feat of becoming profitable in its first year. Says Hyatt: "We are just on fire." Additionally, Gore has begun a London-based equity firm with former Goldman Sachs Asset Management CEO David Blood. It's a partnership that, despite its nickname Blood & Gore, aims to invest in socially responsible ventures.

All this would be hard to walk away from. Or, looked at another way, it would be a good source of seed money for a return to politics. Gore boasts of "moving the needle" in the climate-change debate, but he conceded in his New York appearance, "Look, I'm under no illusion that the office of the President is second to none in its ability to make changes and get things done."

In any case, Gore doesn't have to make any decisions soon. Meanwhile, he's enjoying his red-carpet moment, even as he pleads that he's a little bewildered by it all. The experience, he says, reminds him of a New Yorker cartoon that used to hang on the wall of his Senate office. It showed a funny-looking dog riding a tricycle onstage in an opera house, to rapturous applause from a fancy audience. Gore can relate to what the caption says the dog is thinking: "I don't know why they like this, but I'm going to keep on pedaling."