The question most often asked about Al Gore's potential to win the Nobel Prize for Peace wasn't "Will he win?" but "If he wins, will he run?" Many speculated the publicity and adoration attached to the Prize might provide a springboard into the Presidential race. Not so fast, says Associated Press Political Writer Ron Fournier:

Odds are that the former vice president won't risk his Nobel-burnished image and huge public platform with a return to the rough-and-tumble world of presidential politics -- at least not in 2008, advisers say.

"We face a true planetary emergency," Gore said in a statement shortly after winning the prize on Friday. "The climate crisis is not a political issue."

Actually, it is. Years after Gore adopted climate change as his signature issue, Democrats and Republicans alike now face the scientific certainty of global warming and a public that wants something done about it.

Nobody is better positioned than Gore to ride the issue to the White House.

Several Gore advisers, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to share his thinking, said the award will not make it any more likely that he will seek the presidency. If anything, it makes the presidential race less appealing to Gore, they said, because now he has an international platform and may not want to do anything to diminish it.

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"I've called Al Gore and urged him to run for president so many times," former President Carter told NBC's "Today" show. "He finally told me the last time, 'President Carter, please do not call me.'"

Read the full article at the link above. For once I found something on which I agree with Gore: I wouldn't want Carter calling me, either.

If the award had come in March, it might well have been a different story. Now, only three months before the first voting and virtually every major Democratic consultant, activist, fundraiser, pollster, and ad man already committed to another candidate, it's just not practical. Gore will be quite content to bask in the warm glow of global warming, I meant adulation, and stay "above the fray" as a statesmanlike figure. Heck, he already looks and acts like a statue, so why not?

If Hillary (or whoever wins the Democratic nomination) should lose in 2008, he would be a leading contender for 2012. Even if Democrats win the White House and hold it for two terms, he would only be 69 in 2016 - not too old at all, if he takes care of himself. Right now, Al's on top of the world. Why come down to the dirty business of politics when he is the toast of the world elite?

Edited to correct date - thanks to Lee Ward for noticing!