by Pedro Pereira

Created on: October 12, 2007   Last Updated: October 16, 2007

I remain skeptical. While Al Gore is to be congratulated for winning the Nobel Peace Prize, which he shares with the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it's important to not get carried away.

The Draft Gore movement is shifting into high gear as a result of this momentous achievement, trying to persuade Gore to throw his hat in the ring for the U.S. presidency. It's possible Gore would at last make a great candidate, were he to continue to demonstrate the fire that he did with "An Inconvenient Truth" and in speeches against the Iraq War.

But if he decides to run and what we get is the weak-kneed version of Al Gore we saw in 2000, he might as well stay out and keep doing what he is doing. His current work in trying to address the dangers of climate change is too important to waste on staving off constant attacks from opponents and tailoring his message to say what the brilliant Democratic strategic minds think the people want to hear.

Americans will argue forever about what cost Gore the 2000 election - the Supreme Court, Ralph Nader, dirty right-wing politics.

The truth is Al Gore cost Al Gore the presidency. Had he established himself as a worthy candidate, one with the people's best interests at heart, he might have won not only the popular vote but also the much-needed votes in Florida that would have put him over the top.

But unfortunately, as we saw four years later with John Kerry and we are seeing not with presumed front-runner Hillary Clinton, political expediency has been the priority for Democratic presidential hopefuls. Rather than speak to the needs of the nation, candidates instead choreograph their candidacies to place them squarely in the political spectrum so that they don't offend the right-wing too much while still hoping to capture the folks on the left. So what we get is candidates who stand for nothing beyond getting elected.

That strategy is a loser.

Al, if you're going to run, welcome to the race. But, please, don't give us the spineless candidate too afraid to fight back that we saw in 2000. Give us the Al Gore of the last five years or so, and the people will respond. Conviction may be inconvenient to some, but most will embrace it. What the people don't want again is a play-to-the-middle plastic, tell-us-what-you-think-we-want-to-hear campaign.

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