The Peter Principles: Gored by his oxen

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 (UPI) -- We're not going to have Al Gore to kick around anymore.

The rumors he would not make the race began to circulate on an otherwise unremarkable Sunday afternoon.

By nightfall it was official: the man who won the popular vote for president in 2000 by more than half a million votes yet lost the White House would not be running in 2004.

To the political class that had awaited a rematch between George W. Bush and Gore, the news was a disappointment if not an outright surprise. For Gore, it may simply be recognition of handwriting now fading on the wall it has been there so long.

Gen. George S. Patton had it right when he said, "Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser." A sore loser is even worse.

Gore is a sore loser. He was still alluding to Florida in the Raleigh, N.C. press conference where he made his withdrawal official. It is old and tired and the country has moved on.

George W. Bush is viewed as a legitimate president rather than an accidental one by most of the country, a fact his record job approval numbers underscore. He was helped along in no small part the visible growth in his carriage and confidence in the aftermath of Sept. 11. The strong GOP showing in the Nov. 2002 elections sealed the deal, giving Bush the mandate he could not claim in 2000.

A few pundits and politicos have tried hard to keep Gore's candidacy alive for two years by continually questioning the outcome of the Florida recount. They believed that Gore had won but lost the electoral votes, and the election, because of Republican legal and political machinations.

They wanted Gore to win or, more accurately, because they did not want Bush to win, the continued to present the allegations that the Democrats had put forward as having the veneer of truth.

A December 2002 Hotline Bullseye Poll of 300 Democrats likely to participate in the 2004 nominating process in three key states gave Gore and his allies even more bad news.

The finding are significant as those partisans who participate in the presidential nominating process tend to be much more partisan and activist -- and therefore more likely to share the view that Gore had the election stolen from him -- then those who consider themselves party members but only vote in the general elections.

Close to one third of these voters in each state believe Bush is doing an excellent or good job as president.

According to the survey, 30 percent of New Hampshire Democrats think Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., has the best chance of beating Bush in 2004 compared to 26 percent who say Gore has the best chance though better than 40 percent of Democrats in South Carolina and Iowa say Gore.

Asked to assume that Gore would run, only 19 percent of Democrats In New Hampshire said they would definitely vote for him in the primary. That number rises to 41 percent in South Carolina and 32 percent in Iowa -- but, in each case, is hardly a ringing endorsement of a man who activists in Washington believe had the election stolen from him.

It was also not helpful to Gore's ambitions to learn that, according to the Bullseye poll, 31 percent of Democrats who will participate in the primary process say they would vote for Bush over Gore in the general election while 17 percent of South Carolina primary Democrats and 23 percent of Iowa primary Democrats would vote for Bush in the general election.

All that is, however, prelude.

Asked how they would feel about an independent alternative in the case of a Bush-Gore rematch, 38 percent of the Democrat primary participants in New Hampshire, 24 percent in South Carolina and 34 percent in Iowa said they would support a third-party alternative.

Asked if Gore would win in a man-on-man rematch with Bush, 44 percent of these Democrats in New Hampshire, 23 percent in South Carolina and 32 percent in Iowa said they thought Gore would lose.

The former vice-president's decision to leave the race is the single biggest indicator that he, himself, finally realized the country probably did not want him to president, a hard call for a man who, from the time he was a small boy growing up in Washington's Fairfax Hotel, to make.

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-- The Peter Principles is a regular column on politics, culture and the media by Peter Roff, UPI political analyst and 20-year veteran of the Washington scene.