Will He? Or Won’t He?

In what is becoming the most compelling story of a less than dry campaign cycle, new rumors have emerged that Al Gore may run for President in 2008. There have been claims that friends of the former Vice-President are secretly putting together a campaign team, or at least, putting a claim on two former members of Gore’s campaign team. Tim Shipman of the British newspaper, the Telegraph has stated that Gore’s friends are also putting together a “shadow team” that would be able to run a campaign on short notice, and on a shortened campaign schedule.
Adding more intrigue is the fact that Gore’s current staff is doing it’s best to stamp out the rumors. Gore spokesperson Kalee Kreider has issued a release saying, “There is not a secret campaign operation in Nashville or any other part of the country to mobilize a campaign…other than that which the former Vice President has stated, to mobilize the American people to address the climate crisis.” Additionally, former Gore adviser Michael Feldman said the talk is “Pure fantasy.”
If it’s true that Gore has no desire to run again, he’s not helping his staff put out the fires. During his acceptance speech at the Oscars, where he won an award for best documentary for “An Inconvenient Truth” Gore began to formally announce something, but the music usually used to “play a person off” started up, over the top of him. After the event, Gore played it off as a joke, but there are some conspiracy theorists who claim the crew had no idea he was going to do it.
Personally, I’m not sure I want Gore to run. He could certainly energize a democratic base that is torn between Barack Obama, and Hilary Clinton. He could also further polarize an already polarized America, and could inadvertently energize a republican swath of voters that cannot get excited about their candidates, but could get very excited about defeating one of Bill Clinton’s proteges. He’s had a bit of egg on his face after it was announced that the Global Warming warrior’s own mansion was eating up electricity like the Cookie Monster eats baked goods, and the right would almost certainly label him a sore loser, after demanding recount after recount in Florida. (even though there was damn good reason to do so) And of course the old stories that he claimed things he never actually claimed would be dusted off by the likes of Fox News, and passed off as fact, just as they were the last time. No, now that I type all this out, I don’t think I want Gore to run, the more I think about it, the more I believe an Al Gore campaign in ‘08 would almost surely hand the Right Wing the Whitehouse for at least another 4 years, and that’s something this country desperately needs to avoid.

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