A second act is rare in world politics. History can point to a handful of leaders who managed to reacquire political power after losing it (Napoleon, Churchill, Deng Xiaoping, Alan Garcia). Traditionally, however, when a politician loses his job, he faces the purgatory of being a statesman. At best, he makes money and becomes the titular head of an international organisation. At worst, he gets shot.

Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize, however, highlights a newer and more intriguing possibility for this generation’s crop of statesmen: the ex-politician as policy entrepreneur — a hipster statesman. As a politician, Gore was a noble failure; his most signal accomplishment was to help negotiate a global warming treaty that had zero chance of ratification in his home country. As a statesman, Gore has become a rock star. In the past year, in addition to his Nobel, he has won an Emmy and his movie won an Oscar, thereby guaranteeing himself the World’s Most Awesome Mantle. His documentary An Inconvenient Truth has shifted the debate on global warming in the US. He was the chief promoter of this past summer’s Live Earth concerts. As an environmentalist, Gore is more relevant now than when he was vice president.

Gore is the most prominent hipster statesman, but he is hardly the only one. Last week former president of Mozambique Joaquim Chissano won the inaugural Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership. The prize rewards politicians for becoming statesmen — that is, gracefully leaving office when their constitutional term of office expires. Tony Blair has moved from 10 Downing Street to the slightly more dangerous address of the Middle East, as the envoy for the Quartet (the US, UN, European Union and Russia).

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