The Telegraph report sure can't be accused of being wishy-washy. They report it as absolute truth.

I was hoping Gore would get into it, but lately think he has better things to do. He'd do more good as the head of the EPA or an emergency "War on Human Extinction" Czar.

Still, the idea of the new Gore taking the Big Stage does make the pulse race a little faster. At least until this part:

Two members of Mr Gore's staff from his unsuccessful attempt in 2000 say they have been approached to see if they would be available to work with him again.

I'd rather see Al Gore as president in 2008 than anyone else running.

Just sayin'.

I think the speculation is harmful to any effort to convince him to run. Gore would still have a steep hill to climb in pulling Clinton supporters. I wish he would run, but could he be a one issue president? It's not a one issue country, and is he willing to walk away from the work he is doing to run the country? I wonder. As I said, I wish he would. Maybe he doesn't think he could win. Once he announced he would have to be serious and he would need to be able to bring the party together. Can he do it? I think he can, but it would mean an internecine conflict with the Clinton camp. How much of a bloodsport is Hillary going to make of it? I think Gore has as much, if not more legitimate claim to the office as anybody, when you see just how horribly wrong an illegitimate holder of the office turns the direction. I hope that Mr. Gore sees that he has an opportunity to let the American people right the wrong that was done in 2000.

I respectfully disagree with ThatBozGuy. I think what got us here 1) Nader (please run him over with a bus run on LNG) 2) Gore's silly campaign that "I am my own man!" Becasue, no , he wasn't and he ran a campaign worse than the one Kerry ran. I like HRC and have posted as such. I donno what to think. I'll vote for HRC in the primary. If Obama wins, I won't be angry. I know there are a lot of people who really loathe Hillary. I have to be honest in that, I was ambiguous on the Iraq war. I really didn't think Bush would flat-out lie. I figured there was WMD because, well, his dad sold it to Saddam and Rummy was the delivery boy. And it's her war support that fuels the hate and I understand that. I'm not a war monger but I'm not against the use of force if done consctructively. Are most of anti-war folks on here pacifists? Just curious as we seem to need labels here.

I hope Gore runs, but I don't want him to announce till the end of the Summer. If he runs, I'll send $$$ and I'll blog for him for free. I think he would be our best possible candidate for 2008.

Why??? First he never supported the invasion of Iraq. He made principled speeches against the Bush response -- the idea of a Premptive War Doctrine, many parts of the Patriot Act, super efforts to spy on citizens, torture, abolution of Habeas Corpus -- etc., and much else. I have no idea how he would get out of Iraq, but I think it would be high priority, and artfully done.

I think we win in 2008 when we put several other matters on the table -- yes, Global Warming, yes, Health Care, Yes, Alternative and Green Energy -- and Gore is identified tightly with all these things in a highly principled way.

He may be a little stiff, but he does speak the American version of the English Language well, and on issues, he is clear. I like the fact that he has tuned into alternative TV and multi-media stuff, his TV Channel (Current) is quite interesting particularly if you follow some of the commentary on the net about the video productions. This stuff is youth oriented -- it is the language of younger Americans, and I suspect he would be able to massively appeal to this demographic in any campaign. (In fact, I suspect many of his videomakers would be a key part of the campaign.)

Gore doesn't need to campaign for name recognition -- people already have a sense of who he is, they will be comfortable with him because he comprehends Government -- but he also is quite a profound critic of much of our current process. That, apparently, is the subject of his new forthcoming book. When his book hits the shelves -- that conversation will start long before the actual announcement of a campaign will begin. In fact the campaign will be about issues and political renewal.

Gore gets along fine with International Leaders and he appreciates international organization. He is comfortable with languages and foreign food. Of all the candidates running, he is the most likely to be comfortable in his own skin representing the US -- and most likely to present a means for restoring some of our national reputation post Bush.

Gore is competent -- he understands complex problems, and knows how to convert that understanding into programmatic solutions, and explain those to mass audiences.

Gore is not afraid to have highly competent people around him. He would not likely appoint out-of-touch place-servers to administrative posts, and he would not be super-dependent on base politics as the determinative factor in making policy.

I actually think Gore, with the proper campaign, could actually get a "mandate" for change -- an LBJ or FDR sized mandate of around 60% of the vote in 2008 -- not a narrow calculated margin just skimming by the states necessary for Electorial College victory. I think he could bring forward perhaps 30-35 new Democrats in the House, and 8-10 in the Senate. That would be a mandate for real change. I don't think any other Democrat could accomplish this -- and this is what we need right now.

So how should he run -- well he needs to run a campaign that breaks with a few old icons. First, I think he should announce around Labor Day -- and he should announce his VP at the same time, and spend some time explaining how they would work as a team. It ought to be a return to the Carter-Mondale, Clinton-Gore model, and be a huge critique of Cheney and Bush-Cheneyism. He should make a real effort to raise campaign funds on the net -- with a focus on many small contributors (call them small investors) -- but with a partner already selected, they can hit twice the number of primary and caucus states between September and January, essentially catching up with the early announcers. Gore ought to make it clear that the campaign will include many new faces -- not just the Schrums of the recent past. He should harvest what Howard Dean has built with his organizational efforts -- and build on that. But he should welcome in some of the old-timers, just not as the inner circle that excludes new faces. Gore is free of many party obligations, and he is one of the few who could potentially pull this off.

So I hope he runs -- and thusly withhold any affiliation with any other campaign in hope something like this will happen. I want a Quasi-populist movement that gets a 60% Mandate for Change.

Instead, she seems to have taken Bush at his word as I did so tragically with Powell. I have to demand more from someone who is seeking the presidency than simply matching my faulty judgment based on public knowledge only. Pelosi called this right so Hillary had a shot at making the right call. I was surprised, frankly, that Obama made the right judgment call as an Illinois state senator.

Interestingly, I'm was not surprised at all that Obama made the right call as an Illinois state senator. I think a great deal of the dilemmas we find ourselves in as a country because of this administration can be traced back to, if not a trust of the Bush Administration, a simple incredulity that they "WOULDN'T do that..."

I was one year into my MA in International Relations during the run up to the Iraq war, and I knew it was a lie. I was horrified, as were almost all of my colleagues, and we couldn't get anyone to listen. Obama has a degree in international relations, is obviously intelligent, and didn't have a national constituency to put pressure on him to be a "hawk."

I don't think it was an easy call to make, but it is one of the reasons that Obama has my support. I agree with you that I don't want someone in the Whitehouse who made such a drastic error, apologies, or not.