The cat is out of the bag:

Al Gore will be the Democratic Party’s candidate for president this year.

So says essayist John Derbyshire today on National Review Online. In fact, as Derbyshire notes in his article, he said this last year, and he is increasingly convinced that it’s true.

I find this very interesting indeed because I too have been telling friends for a full year that Al Gore would be the Democrats’ nominee this year, even though he was not openly running for the office. And, I, too, suffered scoffing, derision, and horror for the claim.

It just seemed to me that the enormous amount of respect Mr. Gore was accumulating — wrongly, in my view — for his statist campaign to use global warming as a pretext for a de facto government takeover of the U.S. economy was going to prove too attractive in the long run. And I said that Gore was indeed intentionally using this effort as a surreptitious, risk-free campaign for the Democrats’ presidential nomination.

It was an ingenious plan, I noted, because he could build a huge amount of support among the Democratic Party faithful without suffering any criticism at all from his unwitting opponents. On the contrary, they would see him as a loyal ally and a prospective asset to their eventual campaign — right up until the very moment they felt the knife plunge into the left side of their back between the third and fourth ribs.

In addition, I suggested, if Gore failed to get the nomination, he could very possibly run as a third party candidate. But in any case it appeared to me that he was the most likely prospect to win the Democrats’ nomination, given the gross deficiencies of all the other candidates.

Derbyshire agrees:

Don’t think it couldn’t happen. Don’t, in fact, think it isn’t going to happen. The Democratic party has two lame candidates, without a dime’s worth of executive experience between them. Competing on the campaign trail, by August each will have thoroughly alienated the other’s supporters, and turned off the voting public. Meanwhile, in the wings, there is this guy who was vice president for eight years, who ran a campaign for the presidency and actually won it! (well, according to party lore). He looks presidential, with a fine strapping physique and a big square jaw. You’re hankering after moral authority? How about a Nobel Peace Prize, for crying out loud!!

But … does he want it? Does Al Gore want to be the president of the United States?

Are you kidding me?

Read it here.