From Chads To Riches

Al Gore, consummate wonk and almost President, sheds his past, boosts his portfolio and tries to understand the complex drivers of global change

Peter Hapak for TIME

On the flat-screen in Al Gore's conference room, some other guy is taking the presidential oath of office, but Gore doesn't pause to watch as he glides past, a regal Southern gentleman headed down the hallway toward his office. That dream is in the past, a dozen years and 538 hanging Florida chads ago. A Nobel Prize, vast wealth and the end of a marriage ago. Air Force One would have been nice, but Gore makes do with his "redneck yacht," as he calls the solar- and biodiesel-powered houseboat he keeps on Center Hill Lake in Middle Tennessee, where he entertains...

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