Is Gore running for President? "If he drops 25 to 30 pounds, he’s running."

That's Donna Brazile's tip on how to tell if Gore is running, as quoted by Maureen Dowd. (TimesSelect link.) Gore is out and about with a new book, so he's at least forcing us to talk about whether he's running. And yet:

[James Traub of The New York Times Magazine] said that, as he followed the ex-vice president around, the Goracle was “eating like a maniac: I watched him inhale the clam dip at a reception like a man who doesn’t know when his next meal will be coming.”

Does that mean he has no plans to run? According to Dowd:

If Al Gore is really unplugged and uncensored, as Tipper and his fans say, then he is no longer bound by the opinions of gurus, mercenaries and focus groups. He can be himself, and inhale away and still run if he wants....

Doug Brinkley, the presidential historian, said that even though the fashion now is for fit candidates, after the Civil War, there was a series of overweight presidents. “It showed you had a zest for life,” he said. (The excess baggage may make Bill Clinton and Bill Richardson look roguish, but unfortunately, too many cheeseburgers and ice cream sundaes make Mr. Gore look puffy and waxy.) “Maybe,” Mr. Brinkley suggested, “Gore can sit in Tennessee and do it via high-definition satellite — like McKinley, just eat and sit on the porch.”

So, go ahead and be fat if you must, Al. It makes it harder for you scold us about about overconsumption and global warming, but actually, my read of "An Inconvenient Truth" is that you're just telling everyone to take global warming seriously and do some things that we can do. Some people can do some things and some can do others. If you can't stop overeating, you're like an awful lot of us. There are millions of Americans who can empathize about fat. And for that matter: hypocrisy. If you've got to be fat, try to be good fat, zest-for-life fat. If you've got to be a hypocrite... well, aren't we all?

As for the front-porch strategy, go ahead! Not only is it a good idea in these days when we have no time to go to campaign events because we're too busy hanging out on the web and because of the insanely front-loaded primary schedule. It's environmentally friendly. As you do lots of web-based campaigning, you could put up a nice web page that keeps a running tabulation of the fossil fuel burnt by each of your opponents as they jet and bus all over the place.