Former Vice President Al Gore told the Politico's John Harris that Democratic Party activists should give the Congressional Democratic leadership the "benefit of the doubt" on its efforts to end the Iraq war, which have been loudly criticized by some for their tepidness:

"I would urge Democrats who want our troops out yesterday to show some understanding of the difficult hand the Democratic leaders have to play and give them the benefit of the doubt in expecting that they are going to continue to push the mandate they received from the voters last fall to change the course of this war."

Gore also told ABC News on Tuesday, the same night of his interview with Harris, that he himself would have voted "no" on the bill that the Democrats negotiated with President Bush for funding the war, despite the fact that it included no timeline for withdrawal and gave the president most of what he had asked of Congress.

Gore insists he isn't running for president in 2008 but continues to encourage speculation and egg on would-be drafters. Harris writes that Gore implied he might be tempted to run an unconventional campaign using the Internet as a way to get past the problems of contemporary politics, which he said "rewards a tolerance for artifice, repetition, triviality that I don't have in as great supply as I might have had when I was younger.":

"The solutions to what ails American democracy will take some time and will have to come from a broad engagement by people who do use the new opportunities and tools that are becoming available," he said. "And I think that out of that evolutionary process there may emerge opportunities for new kinds of candidates in both parties."