Al Gore's green streak

National | Will the veep's publisher spoil his moderate image makeover by republishing his extreme environmental tract? | Lynn Vincent

I had a really neat treehouse when I was growing up on the farm," confided the Vice President of the United States to a group of giggling first-graders at a South Dakota campaign stop last March. The elementary school visit was part of the Gore presidential campaign's coming-out. "We are in the process of introducing ourself to America," the veep's aide told a reporter that day: "Who he is, and what he's all about. It's quite a story."

Indeed. And it's a story that's about to be republished in hardback. New York-based publisher Houghton Mifflin will re-release Al Gore's 1992 ecological manifesto Earth in the Balance on April 22. The book's second advent isn't an election-year PR move by the Gore campaign. This year marks the 30th anniversary of Earth Day, and Houghton Mifflin, perhaps sensing the marketing equivalent of stellar alignment, is dusting off and repackaging the environmentalist oeuvre of a man who could be the next president.