LONDON: When I worked for the Guardian in the United States, there was one conversation with the London office that depressed me more than any other. Through 1999 and 2000, as the presidential election neared, I never seemed able to persuade London that the contest between Al Gore and George Bush really mattered. This would be a defining American election, I would argue. It would shape America domestically and internationally, and we needed to give the readers plenty of coverage of events that mattered to them. You’ve gone native, London in its wisdom would respond. American politics is not as interesting as it was in the 1960s and 70s, they would say. Gore and Bush? Two sides of the same modern political coin. Two boring, cautious, middle-class, middle-aged politicians trying to appeal to the centre ground. Bore and Gush, they liked to call them. It became clear to me that bien-pensant London’s heart that year was with Ralph Nader.

Well the whirligig of time has brought in its revenges. I was right. And they were wrong. But the cost of what happened in 2000 has been too great to give way to any sort of smugness. At least, six years on, bien-pensant London sees things differently now, though whether it has learned from experience is another question.

Bush’s position as the Ugly American of the early 21st century was set in stone long ago. And today there is even a revival of interest in Al Gore. The man most Americans wanted to be their president in 2000 is in Britain over the next few days. He will appear at the Hay festival on Monday. He is here to promote his new global-warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which has just opened in the US, helping to produce exactly the boomlet in Gore shares that we can now expect in the British media too.

It is hard not to respect Gore. He has bags of experience. He has been ahead of the curve on a lot of big issues that other politicians have missed or fumbled. He was right about the internet and right about climate change — and still is. He was a Democratic moderate before Bill Clinton. He was right about the first Gulf war — he was in favour — when many in his party were wrong. More strikingly still, he was right about the second Gulf war too — this time he was against — when the bulk of his party got it wrong again. And then there was the 2000 election. It should have been him. And it would have been if he had got one more Supreme Court justice on his side. And if he had succeeded, the history of the last six years would have been very different — not least the history of the Blair government in Britain. My God, that 2000 election mattered a lot.

Gore got another thing right too. He opted out of a grudge rematch in 2004. The right call. But what about 2008, after Bush steps down? Not surprisingly, many in the US are looking at Gore again. The launch of An Inconvenient Truth looks to friend and foe like a smart and timely bit of profile raising. Observers talk of a new, more relaxed and engaging Gore, a Gore reborn to run as a recent cover story in the American Prospect put it.

Although he has dismissed that possibility in public, including recently at the Cannes festival, he never quite kills it off conclusively enough to prevent the speculation from reviving.

It is not hard to see why the speculation continues. Hillary Clinton may be far and away the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination already. But the party has its doubts. Only about four in 10 Democratic voters want her as their candidate. Many fear she is a polarizer. Others, especially in the Democratic ‘netroots’ think she has moved too close to the centre, especially on Iraq. That leaves a space for the best of the rest to challenge her. And who fits the bill better than a man who, in many Democrats’ eyes, has already won the presidency once already? As another recent cover-story has it, Gore is becoming ‘the Un-Hillary’. And one Republican strategist has even come up with the perfect campaign slogan for him: “No more Clintons. No more Bushes. Gore 2008.”

A Gore-Clinton battle would be one of the great political ironies of modern times. But will it happen? Gore has obvious strengths — as well as the familiar weaknesses — as a candidate. He is a national figure. He has the money (Gore has prospered financially since 2000). And, like the three last Democrats to win the White House — Johnson, Carter and Clinton (and unlike Hillary) — Gore is a southerner, which sends the message of moderation that Hillary is striving so hard to create. If the African-American Democrat Harold Ford captures Gore’s old Tennessee seat in the US senate this November, that will only add to the momentum.

But it is therefore important to stress that Gore is not popular. Earlier this month a CBS/New York Times poll found that 28 per cent of Americans have a favourable view of him, against 39 per cent with an unfavourable view. In a notional match-up with Senator John McCain, another poll showed Gore trailing 57 per cent-29 per cent.

“Americans don’t seem to like Al Gore,” the eminent election watcher Charlie Cook told me in Washington this week.

“There’s a feeling that he’s had his day. Europeans have always liked Al Gore more than Americans do.” That’s an important conclusion to hold on to as the Gore bandwagon rolls through liberal Britain over the next week. The bien-pensants have been wrong about American politics before — and they could be about to get it wrong again.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service