No Gore '08

Well, I wish he'd run, since I think everything he's come out supporting in the past six years has been borne out to be stone-cold right: and I'm leery in the extreme about ending up with another round of Clintonian triangulation, which is what we'll get if the presidential race proceeds as it has. Not to mention that Gore '08 would be an elegant piece of poetic justice.

But I think he won't run, and the reason, indirectly enough, is that the Republican candidates suck.

All of them, fearsomely. Which is a crying shame.

See, Democrats are very comfortable right now. They feel like they're going to take the White House next year in a walk; and, to be fair, they will. But what this disastrously results in is a total lack of dissatisfaction with the current crop of Dem candidates. "Hillary? Sounds fine by me, but if there's a problem down the road we've got Barack to fall back on. If he doesn't work out, well hell, Edwards will do in a pinch."

And thus Gore lacks the sort of opening through which one might most energetically catapult. So he will likely have to content himself with a cozy little life of racking up Academy Awards, cash, and - from the sound of it - a Nobel Peace Prize in the morning.

Although I agree with Hitchens about the loss of cachet he will suffer for not running (at least for me personally).