Denver, Colorado - Former vice president Al Gore on Thursday sought to assure US voters that Barack Obama has the experience to lead the country in difficult times and to solve the "planetary emergency" of climate change, Gore's own signature issue. Gore took the stage to a massive roar from the crowd of 75,000 that shook Invesco Field in Denver, Colorado, where Obama was to give a speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination later in the evening.
Gore, who narrowly lost the 2000 elections to President George W Bush, slammed the current president for leading the United States into "one calamity after another" over the last eight years.
He said that the Republican presidential candidate John McCain supported the same policies of the unpopular Bush - a key message Democrats have sought to convey during this week's party convention.
"The same policies - those policies - all over again? I believe in recycling, but that's ridiculous," quipped Gore, who won the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this year for raising awareness about global warming.
Gore likened Obama to Abraham Lincoln, whom he described as a relatively inexperienced legislator who later came to be regarded as one of the nation's greatest presidents for his leadership during the 1861-65 US Civil War. Lincoln, like Obama, entered politics in Illinois and had spent only one term in Congress before becoming president.
"The experience that Lincoln's supporters valued most in that race was his powerful ability to inspire hope in the future at a time of impasse," Gore said. "Once again, we have a candidate whose experience perfectly matches an extraordinary moment of transition."
