I read Gore’s speech and thought of the Presidents who become elder statesmen after they leave office, unencumbered by the need to build a national constituency and able to speak from truth instead of power. Gore seems to have bypassed the President phase and gone right to the statesman-like. He eloquently encapsulates the extent of Bush’s betrayal of American ideals with a quiet but sustained outrage and concludes with some between-the-lines regret that he acquiesced to the theft of the Presidency from him by the Supreme Court in order to “do what I could to prevent efforts to delegitimize George Bush as he took the oath of office.” Has there been any talk of what role he might have within, or as an advisor to, a Kerry administration?