Gore opens the ’08 door a crack, says ‘I haven’t completely ruled it out’

December 12, 2006

In May, Time magazine reported that [tag]Al Gore[/tag] has been “quietly telephoning some of his biggest fund raisers and telling them to feel free to sign on with other potential candidates.” Gore asked these donors to get the word out, instructing, “Tell everybody I’m not running.”

A week later, [tag]Gore[/tag] told the NYT’s Adam Nagourney, “I wanted it, and it was not to be.” He added, “Why should I run for office? I have no interest in running for office. I have run for office. I have run four national campaigns. I have found other ways to serve my country, and I am enjoying them.”

Gore sounded pretty Shermanesque. Now he sounds a little different.

Al Gore is waging a fierce campaign for recognition and an Oscar statuette for his global warming documentary, while reviving talk that he’s pursuing a bigger prize: the presidency. […]

“I am not planning to run for [tag]president[/tag] again,” Gore said last week, arguing that his focus is raising public awareness about global warming and its dire effects. Then, he added: “[tag]I haven’t completely ruled it out[/tag].”

Those words make Gore the 800-pound non-candidate of the Democratic field.

That seems like an entirely fair description. If Gore throws his hat into the ring, he enters the race as an obvious top-tier candidate and, in all likelihood, the frontrunner for the nomination. There was widespread consternation going into 2004 that Gore might run again — a prospect, at the time, to which many Dems were opposed — but those concerns have largely disappeared. Gore’s stature as a Democratic hero has grown considerably since.

I’m just not sure about the rest of the country.

I think many key players in the party and in the blogosphere have seen Gore become one of the leading — if not the leading — progressive voice in the nation. But has the rest of the electorate been as impressed as we’ve been? Perhaps not.

Just a couple of weeks ago, Quinnipiac released its national “Thermometer” survey, which gauged the relative popularity of major political figures. (Respondents were asked to rate leaders 0 to 100 on a “feeling thermometer,” with the highest numbers reflecting the warmest feelings.) Gore’s popularity was lukewarm, at best.

Gore didn’t do too terribly well. Of the 20 political figures in the survey, Gore did only slightly better than George W. Bush (44.9 to 43.8.), and trailed other likely ’08 candidates (Obama, Clinton, Edwards, Richardson) by quite a bit.

My suspicion is that politically-engaged Americans have seen and heard Gore quite a bit the last couple of years — giving inspiring speeches, starring in an amazing movie, writing a best-selling book, taking the national lead on a series of progressive issues — and have been impressed. Politically-engaged Americans, however, are in the minority. A lot of other people still have six-year-old impressions of the former VP.

Now that Gore seems to be opening the door just a crack, he’ll have to consider whether a) those people who haven’t seen much of him since 2000 can be won over; b) whether he wants to try; and c) whether he’ll be willing to endure media jokes about Al Gore 3.0.

Stay tuned.

If Gore throws hit hat into the ring,

He’s a bit pro-wrestlerish, isn’t he?

  • Despite the recent positive treatment that Gore has received from the establishment press — following the success of An Inconvenient Truth — I’ve little confidence that the 2000 election stereotypes can be transcended.

    If he declared, I think the media gloves would come off — and the high school dynamic of the pundit class would start to build around Gore again.

    Fortunately, he’s certainly aware of the media filter issue, and as that great article in the Prospect (the New New Gore) showed, everything he’s done since 2000 has been designed to circumvent the usual rules of the media game.

    Not impossible to change the conventional wisdom on his public image, but it would require constant vigilance to do so.

  • Given the second half of your post, how can you call Gore the “frontrunner for the nomination”? I’d love to see him take it– he has far greater progressive credibility than Clinton and a more proven track record than Obama– but I think he’d have a hard time winning a primary race against either of them when most of the country remembers him as “the man who claimed to have invented the Internet.”

  • The media and the public want, first and foremost, to be entertained, preferably with as little thought and effort as possible (just like most TeeVee). Much as I like and support Gore, I’m afraid main-stream America won’t.

    Edwards is better at providing the candy coating for the progressive pill the nation desparately needs to swallow. Perhaps helped along with Obama as VP.

  • I would like Gore to run. I’m still conflicted over whether he’s my first choice over Clark or Richardson, but I’d like to have the choice.

    He’s won before. No reason he should not win again.

    And thanks to the blogisphere he can cut under the Corporate MSM long enough to position himself for a nomination victory.

  • I’d certainly prefer Gore to all the other candidates. Don’t forget that having oodles of political credibility while not being a currently-serving politician puts one in a powerful position as a candidate.

    Consider the (nearly spooky) parallels to 1968. Nixon, hardly a heartthrob choice, was in a nearly identical position that of Gore now. He’d been a senator and then a Vice President for 8 years, but had been damaged through losing a Presidential campaign that insiders felt he should have won. In fact, by ’62 everyone including Nixon himself thought he was finished politically. Yet in ’68 he came back and knocked off the designated successor to the incumbent President, that incumbent (texan) President having destroyed his viability in a foreign military quagmire.

  • Gore seems an obvious choice.

    He is not the Gore of 2000, his style has relaxed and his heart seems genuinely interested in the topics I have seen him speak about, mainly the environment. BUT, will his heart be in the campaign and will his political advisors boot-strap his new found skills and not put his head back into the Beltway mode of thought.

    Right now I think he is on fire and I don’t think it would take much to sway people who haven’t seem him in six years. He has that presidential aura around him, something that Kerry has never had.

    He has the environmental crowd hands down. And I keep reading about sportsmen who have traditional backed pro-NRA candidates are looking for more environmentally friendly politicians. I think in two years, the war and the environment are going to be the two big vote topics.

    I think Gore is the man if he can keep his outside of the Beltway mentality.

  • Run, Gore, run. I quite like Edwards, Obama and Richardson as well. Clark is a wonderful man but has zero charisma. I guess I am just pleased that we have decent candidates to choose from.

  • The Jesuits taught me in Moral Theology class that restitution for theft requires the return of the thing stolen, and not a substitute, to the person from whom it was stolen, and not a surrogate.

    Gore in ’08 — Deus vult.

  • First of all, IMO Al Gore is plenty likable. But his intelligence does make some idiots feel a bit stupid, which they of course translate into “unlikable”.

    But maybe Americans have had enough of the bullshit feel-good “faith-based” politics Bush ran on. Maybe “people we’d like to have a beer with” aren’t necessarily the best leaders?

    Ya think?

    We’re in a fucking hell of a mess, and I’m not just talking about Iraq. So maybe now it’s time for the grownups to get us out of the mess America got us all into by voting for the “likable” dimwit.

    The Dems are the force to beat, and they want Gore overwhelmingly over all the other Dems who are probably/maybe running. Obama has the pizazz, but Gore has the street cred. Put them together, and they would be unbeatable.

    I don’t think it would take much to remind the general public how much better off we would have been if Bush’s brother hadn’t stolen the 2000 election.

    We need Al Gore, even though David is right and we don’t deserve him.

  • Gore has been proven right on every major issue of our time, including supporting the internet in its formative years. Although I like Wes Clark, I really can’t imagine supporting anyone else if Gore is in the race. If he runs strongly against the media, mocking, insulting, and laughing at them, he can’t go wrong. Take a page from the Republican playbook, and attack the MSM relentlessly, and they will cower and play along. It’s when you don’t attack them the the mighty wurlitzer can win.

  • Imagine the credentials, domestic and foreign, that a Gore/Richardson ticket would have. . . it might be nice to have leaders who know what they are doing for a change.

  • If Huffington Report is right, the ice cap is destined to melt entirely before social security goes “bankrupt”. Now who is on the right side of history?

  • I think a lot of independents who went with Bush have “buyer’s remorse” and wished they had voted for Gore. If he picks a dynamic running mate — whether someone already well known, such as Edwards, Clark, or Obama, or a popular outsider, like Schweitzer or Sebelius — he’d have even more going for him. And with the way the war and public approval of it is going, they could tear apart a McCain-Lieberman ticket (which is whom I predict will be the Republican nominees).

  • A question I have about the thermometer poll is that it asks how popular these potential presidential contenders are, not who would you vote for to lead the country. Look at Bush’s popularity number – 43.8 – and consider that his job approval rating is about 13 points lower. Gore may not be Mr. Popularity in the poll, but if the respondents were asked who would you want to get us out of the current mess, I bet he would score much, much higher. Plus, one needs to take into account that five of the people ranked higher in popularity than Gore had over 40% of the respondents reply that they didn’t know enough about the person to score them at all. The Quinnipiac number really don’t say a whole lot.

  • Sadly, I have no doubt that the msm would immediately and reflexively resort to their standard repub talking points about Gore (exaggerator, boring, radical) if he chose to run. They do it now, every time he gets into the news. They talk about him with a snicker “Oh that’s just Al Gore. You know he said he invented the internet. Tee hee.” Even PBS.

    If the media gave him a fair shake he would win in a landslide. Big if.

  • If Gore really, really wants to be President – it wil be his. Last time he looked like he was in sleeping mode and he still won the popular vote. This time he has to make a connection with the voters.

  • I think Gore would be an excellent president and may well be electable in 2008. I don’t see Edwards as a real player this time around. He only served one term in the Senate, which is what most people’s chief complaint about Obama is, and he has never drawn the kinds of crowds that Obama does without even trying.

    His one talking point about “my daddy worked in a mill” is old now and never was all that effective anyway. He’s a good guy, don’t get me wrong, but he’s just another face in the crowd these days and hasn’t even been in government for years now.

    Obama is going to be the one to watch, mark my words. Even as a VP candidate he will be the key to the election, regardless of who the top dog candidate is.

    A wise man once said, “There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” Or as we might put it in more modern vernacular, “Surf’s up, dude!” 🙂

  • I like Edwards, Obama, and Clark, but they seem like lightweights compared to Gore, who has presence, and did win the popular vote (and the electoral if you believe Florida was either stolen or messed up) once. And can do it again.

    Gore needs to be himself instead of “handled” and I think people would go for him big time.

  • Curmudgeon — If I understand correctly Obama served in the Illinois state legislature before becoming a U.S. Senator. Taking that into consideration it does make him more experienced than Edwards.

    In any case, for this early on we have a field of really strong potential candidates.

  • “In any case, for this early on we have a field of really strong potential candidates.” – MAA

    Not a bad crop, though the Governor of Iowa is a bit of a puzzle. I’d like to see the official list by April.

    Need to decide whom to work for.

  • I think Gore is the man if he can keep his outside of the Beltway mentality.

    And for the love of Pete, do *not* hire Donna Brazil or Bob Shrum.

    I say get Webb’s advisors (please of please don’t let them be Brazil or Shrum) and Sherrod Brown’s staff. The former don’t know how to pull punches and the latter clearly know how to make it work on the ground. In Ohio.

    Oh and I think all of them should carefully study Kathleen Harris’ campaign. If that isn’t a case study in what not to do, I can’t imagine what is.

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