The Gore non-candidacy

It's non-commital statements like this that have me holding out hope:

Gore, who barely lost the 2000 presidential election to President Bush [ed: Al Gore actually won the popular vote in the 2000 presidential election, and would have won the electoral vote had the Supreme Court not halted the recount in Florida], has experienced a resurgence in popularity among many Democrats and is still viewed as a potential dark horse candidate in 2008. On Friday, he said he would not categorically rule out another run for public office, but he said he "can't foresee" any circumstances that would lead him to enter the race.

"I'm involved in a different kind of campaign," Gore said.

I don't know if it's residual guilt from 2000, not voting for the man who was my first political hero when he was the junior senator from Tennessee, but I keep holding out hope that Gore takes the plunge. I have a hard time thinking of anyone else who's more capable of pulling this nation out of the morass of the last six years than this man, who's saying things like this when talking about global warming:

"It's a challenge to the moral imagination of humankind," Gore said at a packed news conference, which several noted climate scientists and authors attended. Others provided videotaped endorsements or appeared by live video link.

Maybe it's because he was vocally against the war in Iraq from day one (wait a sec to click through the ad). Maybe it's his quiet swinging into action on behalf of Katrina victims while the federal government was paralyzed. Maybe it's his subversion of the media. Or maybe it's just I'd like to have the opportunity to vote for a person who could possibly win an Academy Award and the Nobel Peace Prize.

If Gore goes in, I'm all-in with him. "A different kind of campaign," indeed.