The inaugural issue of Wholphin (McSweeney’s DVD media arm) includes a gem of a mini-doc of Al Gore in 1999, shot and directed by Spike Jonze. It’s a warm and intimate look at a day in the life of then-presidential candidate, chilling in Carthage, Tennessee, and at a vacation spot in North Carolina, with Tipper and his daughter Karenna.

The film was made for the Democratic Convention of 2000, but was never more widely released. The liner notes (which includes a short interview with Jonze) suggest the possibility that a larger airing of this short may have offset the media portrayal of Gore as a stiff and uncharismatic candidate. Indeed, watching this relaxed, witty and completely amiable man putz around the house with his family leaves you aching, knowing that he would soon lose to the privileged, unprincipled fratboy failure who has now occupied the White House for two craptastic terms. Little did Al Gore or Spike Jonze know that this tiny film would be viewed, in 2006, as a tragedy. Watching this film is a little like peering back through the looking glass to a brighter time and place, before we were all plunged into this collective nightmarish alternate reality …

View the 15-minute piece on the Wholphin site, or on Video Google.

[via BoingBoing]

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Lastly, I leave you with this (rhetorical) question: why should we draft Al Gore?