Al Gore rules out presidential run after Nobel prize

WASHINGTON—Former US vice president Al Gore said Wednesday that his Nobel Peace Prize triumph had not altered his intention to stay out of the 2008 presidential race.
But Gore could still shake up the Democratic Party nomination by endorsing a candidate other than front-runner Hillary Clinton. Speculation following the peace prize announcement last week that Gore would run was quashed he told Norwegian broadcaster NRK: “I don’t have plans to be a candidate again, so I don’t really see it in that context at all.”
He added: “I’m involved in another kind of campaign. It’s a global campaign to change the way people think about the climate crisis.” Last month, Gore, 59, said he would likely endorse a Democrat for president before the primary season was over, the Washington Post reported.
Gore has already met with at least three Democratic hopefuls — Senators Barack Obama and Christopher Dodd, and former senator John Edwards, according to the Post. The paper noted that he has not met with Clinton, nor with New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, a member of President Bill Clinton’s cabinet.
Gore has been on shaky terms with the Clinton clan for years, starting in the 2000 election when he distanced himself from President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. Gore went on to win the popular vote, but lose the election to Republican George W. Bush. Several US publications at the time reported that Gore privately blamed Clinton for losing the election because of Lewinsky and other scandals.
“It seems safe to predict that Gore will not be endorsing the bid of the senator from New York,” the Post wrote in the weeks before Gore won the Nobel on October 12. “A more open question might be whether he would throw his support to Obama — the only candidate in the top tier who, like Gore, opposed the war in Iraq from the start — or another surging contender at a critical moment to try to derail Hillary Clinton’s quest for the nomination.”
In 2004 Gore endorsed former Vermont governor Howard Dean largely for his strong stance against the US-led war in Iraq. A one-time front-runner, Dean crashed out of the nomination process in the early stages. Gore’s main political disagreement with Hillary Clinton is likely to be her October 2002 Senate vote authorizing Bush to use force in Iraq.
But according to The Politico, an insider publication, Hillary Clinton’s lead in the polls is so overwhelming — 50 percent in a field of eight candidates — and her campaign chest so deep that an other-than-Hillary endorsement would be counterproductive. And has Gore truly backed out? Some die-hard supporters will likely still not accept the answer Gore gave in Oslo.
“I want to hear him say, If called, I will not serve my country,’” the treasurer of the national Draft Gore organization (www.draftgore.com), Eva Ritchey, told the New York Times last week. The Draft Gore group, which has had no links to its preferred candidate, said traffic on its website surged dramatically after he won the Nobel Prize.
The group even ran a full-page advertisement in The New York Times on October 10 pleading for Gore to run.—Agencies