I was talking to a friend tonight over drinks about Al Gore. I said I'd always liked Gore, thought he'd gotten a viciously bad rap from the press and the conservative hit-machine. But somehow, I said, it just looked to me like there was too much scar tissue to ever make a go of it. All the gas-lighting about his being insincere or wooden or calculating has just pressed him deeper into a shell of equivocation and mannered self-presentation. So, having been accused so many times of being insincere he works as hard as he can to seem sincere and in so doing seems even less sincere. The whole thing is sad to me. But I'm not sure its being sad makes it untrue.

Then I saw this other nugget in the CBS/Times poll. Gore's favorable rating is only 19%. His unfavorable is 43%. Now let's toss out the obligatory and quite correct point that this is very early in a potential campaign. And recent events -- the election, Bush's popularity, etc. -- have been almost perfectly designed to diminish Gore in the public eye. But how do you get around a 19% approval rating being a devastating verdict?

I can't see where you do.