The next Presidential election in the US will not occur for more than three years, but speculation is already growing on whom the parties will choose for their nominees. Organization for all the prospective candidates is well underway and each has already been making the obligatory trips to Iowa and New Hampshire to guarantee consideration in the first of the caucuses and primaries. Pundits and bloggers are already wasting airtime and bandwidth on their ideas and theories and so, not to be left behind, am I.

I would like to throw out a name that is not getting the attention and thought I believe it deserves: Albert Gore, Jr.

Several months ago, I was watching a speech on C-SPAN that the former Vice-President delivered to Move-On. For over an hour and a half, Al Gore spoke eloquently and knowledgably on a myriad of subjects without once looking at notes. Can anyone, anyone imagine the current defiler of the Oval Office speaking eloquently and knowledgably about ANYTHING for more than a few seconds, even with notes and pictures before him?

Gore won the popular vote in 2000. I do not refer to Florida. Even giving Mr. Bush the vote count he claims in Florida, Gore STILL won the popular vote, with more than 51 million votes to just over 50 million for Bush. More Americans voted for Al Gore in 2000 than George Bush, a fact that even Republican defenders of Bush admit.

It is not unthinkable that a defeated candidate for President should come back eight years later and win the prize. In 1960, Vice-President Richard Nixon narrowly lost to John F. Kennedy, some would say because of vote-rigging in Chicago. He then lost the Governor’s race in California two years later. Yet, in the middle of a divisive and deeply unpopular war, he came back in 1968 to take the White House. Are the situations in this election, that different?

When we look at the alternatives, Al Gore stands head and shoulders above all others. Among the Democrats, the front-runner seems to be Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has masterfully moved herself to the center, as her husband did fourteen years ago. Yet, if there is anyone in the Democratic Party beside Ted Kennedy who could get Republican testosterone flowing more freely than Hillary Clinton, I can’t imagine who it might be. The Swift Boat Veterans’ attacks on John Kerry would be child’s play compared to the venom that would be spewed by Headrush Limbaugh and the GOP Chairman, “Larry Bud” Mehlman and their ilk. Kerry’s inept campaign in 2004 cannot be overcome and there are only dwarfs among the many others who covet the Democratic nomination.

Among the Republicans, neither John McCain nor Rudy Guilliani, the only candidates of gravitas that people in the center could consider, can realistic expect the theocratic right that controls the GOP to allow them the nomination. For one, Guilliani is pro-choice and pro-gay. McCain is one of the “Gang of 14” who have thrarted the venomous right’s plans for all-out war in the Senate over judicial nominations. No. The Republican nomination will go to Bill Frist, George Allen, Rick Santorum, Condi Rice, or, in the absence of an early consensus, Dick Cheney. Frist, Allen, and Santorum are fundamentalist theocrats. Rice is one of the architects of the failed wars on terror and Iraq, and Dick Cheney will have already had eight years as President, with the disastrous results we now see.

Let us look at Al Gore and see a man of vision and courage who could be a President we would actually be proud of. How often have you watched The West Wing and asked yourself, why can’t Josiah Bartlet be the real President? Wouldn’t it be nice to have an intelligent President for a change, one who has principles, one who has vision, one who has integrity?

Please consider Al Gore. He’s won once. He can win again.