As I've said many times in the last few years, the scariest thing about the 2000 presidential election was that Bush almost won.

Without rehashing the argument over what was most assuredly a stolen presidential election that year, it's got to be difficult for even the most slack-jawed, Neanderthal conservative to not admit that the United States would look much better today if Al Gore had been able to assume the office he rightfully won.

And here's Richard Cohen in the Washington Post today with a column about Gore's ongoing environmental activism, his new movie on the calamity we are moving toward and, on an interesting note, the idea of Gore being the political Comeback Kid of all time in 2008. Here's Cohen on Gore:

Gore insists his presidential aspirations are behind him. "I think there are other ways to serve," he told me. No doubt. But on paper, he is the near-perfect Democratic candidate for 2008. Among other things, he won the popular vote in 2000. He opposed going to war in Iraq, but he supported the Persian Gulf War -- right both times. He is smart, experienced and, despite the false caricatures, a man versed in the new technologies -- especially the Internet. He is much more a person of the 21st century than most of the other potential candidates. Trouble is, a campaign is not a film. Gore could be a great president. First, though, he has to be a good candidate.

In the meantime, he is a man on a mission. Wherever he goes -- and he travels incessantly -- he finds time and an audience to deliver his (free) lecture on global warming. It and the film leave no doubt of the peril we face, nor do they leave any doubt that Gore, at last, is a man at home in his role. He is master teacher, pedagogue, know-it-all, smarter than most of us, better informed and, having tried and failed to gain the presidency, he has raised his sights to save the world. We simply cannot afford for Al Gore to lose again.

Interesting thoughts, despite Cohen's incorrect assertion that Gore ought not "lose again." Note to Cohen: He didn't "lose" the first time.

Cohen also comments on the film itself, saying that Gore brings an intellect and weight to the issue that Bush could never dream of attaining.

"The contrast is stark. Gore -- more at ease in the lecture hall than he ever was on the stump -- summons science to tell a harrowing story and offers science as the antidote," writes Cohen. "No feat of imagination could have Bush do something similar -- even the sentences are beyond him."

Gore has indeed been against the disastrous Iraq war from the very beginning, he has always been Mr. Environment which can, and should, be turned into a major campaign issue in 2008 and all but those so drunk on GOP Kool-aid that they can't see straight know he got screwed in 2000.

More than anything, at least half the country now knows that were it not for Katherine Harris and a right-wing faction of the U.S. Supreme Court, George W. Bush would have spent the last five years clearing brush and reading comic books in Texas instead of assuming Gore's spot and taking America down such a horrible path.

To quote John Greenleaf Whittier, "For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: 'it might have been!'"