Holiday beard ends odd case of the disappearing candidate

Call it the mysterious case of the disappearing candidate. Since Al Gore conceded the presidential election to George Bush last December, he has been almost invisible. True, he has been spotted here and there, particularly at a couple of universities where he volunteered to teach courses in journalism and public policy, but for the most part he has kept an uncanny silence.

Could all that be about to change? The New York Times was able to announce a sighting yesterday of the erstwhile vice-president in Europe, where he has been on holiday for several weeks. Admittedly, the paper's report read a bit like a sighting of a UFO, or an escaped criminal. It also included the intriguing titbit that Mr Gore has grown a beard (a little straggly and grey, but not totally inelegant, to judge from the picture).

But there are also plans afoot for Mr Gore to campaign for a number of Democratic candidates, both this autumn and next. The man who hopes to wrest the New Jersey governorship from the Republicans, James McGreevey, has secured Mr Gore's services. The former vice-president will also run a political academy in Nashville this summer to instruct college graduates on the strange voodoo science known as political campaigning.

And then? For the moment, it seems, all roads are still open. Mr Gore has told his friends he would like to run for president again in 2004.

But it remains to be seen whether the Democratic Party, and, more importantly, the party's fund-raisers, can stomach the idea.

Although he won the popular vote and came within a few dimpled chads of clinching the presidency last year, most Democrats agree that Mr Gore ran a dog of a campaign, essentially throwing away a race that there was no good excuse to lose. With his ever-shifting tone and policy direction, voters regularly complained they did not know who the real Al Gore was.

His post-electoral silence has not been greeted kindly, either. "If Gore cared about the issues he raised during the campaign, why isn't he front and centre in the leadership of the loyal opposition?" the liberal columnist Bob Scheer wrote recently. "The wound-licking has gone on long enough."

No doubt the beard will prompt all sorts of comment about shifting personas and public presentation. But The New York Times added in its report that the facial hair "had nothing to do with politics" and was unlikely to be seen in the United States. Remember, Al Gore does know all about close shaves.