Rolling Stone on Al Gore 2008 Speculation

Al Gore. Should he run or shouldn't he? I admit it's tempting to think about and if he actually runs, I may have a hard time figuring out who I'm going to support. And yet, there's been something very good about having a major Democratic voice who isn't running for office, or helping his wife. Actually that last isn't fair to Bill Clinton—he clearly helped the Democrats last fall, particularly with that fired-up Chris Wallace interview—but Bill for the next two years is no longer the ex-president weighing in but a candidate's husband.

Other Democratic voices besides Al Gore and Bill Clinton (past tense for now) include Bill Moyers and Jimmy Carter and they're powerful forces, powerful enough to suggest we need more of that. Come to think of it, we just gained another voice this week: John Kerry who can now focus on the issues and legislative moves he knows well.

So, to borrow a phrase from the Rolling Stone, let's 'imagine' Al Gore running for president for a long, what-if moment (hat tip to Steve Soto of The Left Coaster):

A stiff vice president campaigns on his administration's legacy of unprecedented prosperity. Looks terrible on TV. Bows out, following a disputed vote count. Then, two terms later, with no incumbent in the race, he re-enters the fray. Promises to change the course of a disastrous war founded on lies. And charges to victory. I'm referring, of course, to the 1968 campaign of Richard Milhous Nixon. But four decades later, history has a chance to repeat itself for Albert Arnold Gore.

If the Democrats were going to sit down and construct the perfect candidate for 2008, they'd be hard-pressed to improve on Gore. Unlike Hillary Clinton, he has no controversial vote on Iraq to defend. Unlike Barack Obama and John Edwards, he has extensive experience in both the Senate and the White House. He has put aside his wooden, policy-wonk demeanor to emerge as the Bush administration's most eloquent critic. And thanks to An Inconvenient Truth, Gore is not only the most impassioned leader on the most urgent crisis facing the planet, he's also a Hollywood celebrity, the star of the third-highest-grossing documentary of all time.

Deep in the Rolling Stone article there's discussion of whether candidate Gore can be as loose and relaxed as he has been during the last five years of giving speeches. It's an interesting discussion because Hillary Clinton, as qualified as she is, tends to go back and forth between being Hillary at her best—casual, quick and even brilliant—to Hillary the overly cautious triangulator (a model for Hillary to think about might be Senator Webb who can be careful about how he speaks and even a little formal but his speech the other day was so beautifully clear-eyed and firm).

Predictions in the current climate are very difficult but I suspect that if one of the frontrunners can't break away clearly in the next ten months, and Al Gore decides to run and can keep that looser version of himself up front, he could easily go all the way.