Former Vice President Al Gore came out with guns blazing today, arguing against, well, guns blazing, in the form of a pre-emptive strike against Iraq. In short, this may be the shrewdest move Gore has ever made in his political life. Which makes me wonder if it was his idea, or a smart gamble on the part of the Democratic Party. It's no secret that many would like to see Gore step aside in 2004, but at the same time, there are reports of some in the party who felt he got a raw enough deal in 2000 to warrant a rematch with Dubya. As our current president himself said, "Fool me once, shame on...shame on you...Ifoolme...you can't get fooled again." Only now Gore and the Democrats have a fool-proof way to deal with the contentious issue of a Gore candidacy.

It's really rather simple. If war with Iraq turns out to be a horribly bad idea, with or without the war itself actually happening, Gore is the man for standing up to Bush's war-mongering. He would have the mother of all I-told-you-so's as political capital. To date, the only other Democratic hopeful to come out against the impending invastion is Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, and mano a mano, Big Al could probably take him in the primaries. If the U.S. does attack, and fails to meet its objectives, Tipper may as well start picking out curtains.

On the other hand, if Bush's campaign against Saddam Hussein is successful, the Dems have an easy excuse to get Gore off of the national stage, and a handful of candidates better suited to face off with an incumbent president coming off what could be a huge public relations success. Conventional wisdom has always pointed to the notion that Gore is NOT the man to knock Bush out of the catbird seat, but to mix metaphors, he might be able to chase him out of the doghouse. By standing up to him on Iraq, he practically guarantees that the only way he'll go up against Bush if he has been thoroughly humiliated by the time the election rolls around. If not, let one of the new guys take him on.

What makes this whole thing genius is that Gore gets a built-in exit strategy. If we do take Hussein down, Gore will have even further solidified his standing in liberal academia with his multilateral, anti-war position. He gets to exchange his political capital for academic captial immediately, and move into the sort of University job many envisioned him taking after 2000. Only now, he would not be coming in as the loser of a disputed election, but as a principled liberal who is willing to take on a popular president.

Somebody somewhere took a good look at the entirety of the Democrats' situation going into the 2004 primaries, and came up with a brilliant, elegant solution to, literally, all their problems. I'd love to find out who it was, because that's the person I would want to vote for.