Whereas Bush, McCain and the Republicans are rapidly losing credibility ~ Al Gore is increasingly being seen as the Democrats best choice, versus Hillary, for winning back the White House in 2008.
I personally have been most impressed with the REAL Al Gore who is at the head of the curve on global warming and is taking himself far less seriously than he did in 2000. On the other hand, I cringe at the thought of Hillary Clinton being the Democratic standard bearer in 2008.
Evidently John Heileman, is picking up the same vibes and files this report in the May 29th issue of New York Magazine .
Allen L Roland
GORE HEADS TO 2008
http://www.nymetro.com/news/politics/17065/
JOHN HEILEMAN, NEW YORK - - The burst of enthusiasm for Gore owes much to his emergence, since 9/11, as one of the Bush administration's most full-throated critics. On state-sanctioned torture, wiretapping, and, crucially, Iraq, his indictments have been searing and prescient, often far ahead of his party.
He has sounded nothing like the Gore we remember -calculating, chameleonic, soporific - from the 2000 campaign. He has sounded like a man, in the words of a top Republican strategist, who " found his voice in the wilderness."
But the Gore boomlet is also being driven by another force: the creeping sense of foreboding about the prospect of Hillary Clinton's march to her party's nomination. "Every conversation in Democratic politics right now has the same three sentences," observes a senior party player.
"One: 'She is the presumptive front-runner.' Two: 'I don't much like her, but I don't want to cross her, for God's sake!' And three: 'If she's our nominee, we're going to get killed.'
It's like some Japanese epic film where everyone sees the disaster coming in the third reel but no one can figure out what to do about it."
Gore's loyalists take pains to avoid criticizing Hillary (on the record, at least). But many of them plainly see their guy as the solution to the Democrats' dilemma. "If he runs, he's certainly the front-runner or the co-front-runner with Mrs. Clinton," contends Ron Klain, Gore's former vice-presidential chief of staff. "And, in the end, he would probably win the nomination.". . .
Eleven years ago, I wrote a story about Gore in which I remarked that "what any sensible person does in anticipation of a sustained piece of oratory by Al Gore" is "order another cup of coffee-black." So I can't help but laugh when Gore arrives for the first of our conversations carrying a dainty white cup, walks silently over, waiter-like, and intones, "I understand, sir, you take it black.". . .
"When Al Gore is being Al Gore, he's incredible, and that's who he's being now," Senator Chuck Schumer tells me. "But that's not who he was as a presidential candidate. And that's why he lost.". . .
Does he, like many Democrats, think the election was stolen? Gore pauses a long time and stares into the middle distance. "There may come a time when I speak on that," Gore says, "but it's not now; I need more time to frame it carefully if I do." Gore sighs. "In our system, there's no intermediate step between a definitive Supreme Court decision and violent revolution."
Later, I put the question of Gore's views on the matter to David Boies, his lawyer in the Florida-recount battle. "He thought the court's ruling was wrong and obviously political," Boies says. So he considers the election stolen? "I think he does-and he's right.". . .
After the Lewinsky scandal and the 2000 campaign, the Clinton-Gore relationship plummeted into a downward spiral. On Gore's side, there was a bedrock belief that, as one of his friends puts it, "if Clinton hadn't been impeached, Al Gore would be president and the world would be a different place."
And on Clinton's side, there was certainty that had Gore been even a modestly competent campaigner, the impeachment wouldn't have mattered-a view the Clinton people (and Clinton himself) liberally spread around. By the time Clinton and Gore left the White House, each was nurturing such grave resentments that they were no longer speaking.
Gore's relationship with Hillary has long been the subject of close study by those in their respective orbits. But few of the extant theories involve the concept of bonhomie. "He intensely dislikes her," says one former Gore adjutant. "It all goes back to 1993 and 1994, when there were two vice-presidents: Al Gore and Hillary Clinton. They fought for turf, for resources, for projects. It was almost like a sibling rivalry over who was the second-most-important person in the White House.
Second, they're highly similar people. They're very intellectual, very moralistic, very black-and-white-whereas President Clinton's view was 'You're my enemy today, you're my friend tomorrow. You fuck up today, you're going to save the day tomorrow. I want to get along with everybody.'
And third, when Gore-istas say, 'We think Clinton was a negative for Gore in 2000,' high on that list is Mrs. Clinton's running for Senate in 2000 - so instead of her and the president being seen as a fading force and letting Gore emerge, it was the Clinton dynasty being seen as an ever-present force in American politics.". . .
For some time, the thinking there has been that only two potential candidates have the capacity to toss the chessboard in the air, altering Team Hillary's carefully calibrated plans: Barack Obama and Gore. And it is Gore who would produce the biggest fits - not least because he would bring to the surface all the old internecine rivalries and interfamilial weirdness of the Clinton years.
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