Gore won't run

What happened

Former vice president Al Gore on Wednesday ruled out running for president again. A Web site proposing that supporters “draft” Gore to launch another bid for the White House was flooded with traffic after Gore last week won a share of the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on global warming. “I don’t have plans to be a candidate again,” Gore told Norwegian broadcaster NRK. “I’m involved in another kind of campaign.”

What the commentators said

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The draft-Gore crowd is looking for “vindication and justice,” said The Cincinnati Post in an editorial. They will “go to their graves” thinking Gore was robbed of the White House in 2000. But they also think backing their man is “practical politics, not a blast from the past.” Gore is riding a wave of popularity, and he can unite Democrats and independents in a way that none of the other Democratic candidates can.

Get it through your head, said Ken Rudin on NPR.org. “Al Gore is not going to run.” He has said it over and over again, yet even repeating the message this week hasn’t stopped his fans from begging him to declare his candidacy. “Why should he?” Republicans once “ridiculed him as Ozone Man,” and even some Democrats rolled their eyes as he droned on about policy during his 2000 bid. “The fellow he lost to that year and the war he opposed two years later are extremely unpopular.” Gore has finally “gotten the last laugh.”

Gore’s sudden stardom, courtesy of the Nobel committee, has added to Republicans’ recent funk, said William Kristol in The Weekly Standard. “Cheer up,” GOP! ”After all, among other recent American winners of the "Peace" prize were Jimmy Carter in 2002 and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War in 1985. These turned out to be pretty good contrarian indicators for how the American people would vote in the next presidential election—to say nothing of what actually produces peace in the real world.”