Al Gore Wins the Nobel Peace Prize, Will He Run in '08?

In a full-page New York Times ad on Oct. 10, a group of grassroots Democrats, called DraftGore.com, published an open letter to Gore pleading with him to enter the race.

"You say you have fallen out of love with politics, and you have every reason to feel that way," the letter read. "But we know you have not fallen out of love with your country. And your country needs you now -- as do your party and the planet you are fighting so hard to save."

Across the country, local draft-Gore groups have sprung up, preparing for signature drives to put Gore on the ballot in Democratic primaries, even as the clock on registration deadlines ticks down.

Some Gore backers hope that Gore might change his mind and enter the race after Oct. 12, the scheduled date for announcing the Nobel Peace Prize, for which he is a nominee because of his work on global warming.

The urgency that these rank-and-file Democrats feel about a Gore candidacy derives, in part, from the inadequacies of the current crop of presidential hopefuls who are seen as lacking the foresight, the experience or the gravitas that Gore offers.

Front-runner Hillary Clinton may have reinvented herself as an Iraq War critic for the Democratic primaries, but she was a staunch supporter of the war from 2002 to 2005, even aligning herself with Sen. John McCain's advocacy for a military escalation.

In a Dec. 8, 2003, article, New York Times columnist William Safire dubbed Sen. Clinton "a congenital hawk" whose mantra on Iraq was "failure is not an option."

It was not until George W. Bush's approval ratings went into freefall in late 2005 -- and Sen. Clinton was eyeing the Democratic presidential nomination -- that she began repositioning herself as a war opponent.

By contrast, Gore was one of the few politicians of national stature who vocally opposed a preemptive war against Iraq amid the war fever of the time. In a speech in San Francisco on Sept. 23, 2002, he described the dangers of the Bush Doctrine's muscular unilateralism and the harm that could result from charging into Iraq.

Bashing Gore

Gore was excoriated by the Inside-the-Beltway pundit class for his deviant behavior in questioning President Bush's wisdom.

"Gore's speech was one no decent politician could have delivered," wrote Washington Post columnist Michael Kelly. "It was dishonest, cheap, low. It was hollow. It was bereft of policy, of solutions, of constructive ideas, very nearly of facts -- bereft of anything other than taunts and jibes and embarrassingly obvious lies. It was breathtakingly hypocritical, a naked political assault delivered in tones of moral condescension from a man pretending to be superior to mere politics. It was wretched. It was vile. It was contemptible."

"A pudding with no theme but much poison," declared another Post columnist, Charles Krauthammer. "It was a disgrace -- a series of cheap shots strung together without logic or coherence."

While some pundits depicted Gore's motivation as "opportunism," columnist William Bennett mocked Gore for banishing himself "from the mainstream of public opinion." In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, entitled "Al Gore's Political Suicide," Bennett said Gore had engaged in "an act of self-immolation" by daring to criticize Bush's policy.

"Now we have reason to be grateful once again that Al Gore is not the man in the White House, and never will be," Bennett wrote.

Indeed, while doing the research for our new book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, I was surprised how often it was Gore who emerged from the political shadows to give a speech that crystallized the challenges facing the country.

Beyond his prescient comments about the Iraq War and his leadership on global warming, Gore offered erudite explanations of how Bush's arrogation of power marked an unprecedented assault on the U.S. Constitution and the delicate system of checks and balances that the Founders devised to protect the liberties of the American people.