Al Gore On The Red Carpet For A Cause

Former VP Hits The Road With His Global Warming Documentary

(CBS/AP)  The movie opens May 24 in New York and Los Angeles, the day a book of the same name goes on sale.

It's not, Gore insists, a prelude to another run for office.

"I'm a recovering politician, on about Step 9," he says. "But I'm on a different kind of campaign now - to persuade people to take action to solve the climate crisis, and it's always easier when you're focused on one thing."

For most of his adult life, Gore was focused on the presidency. He ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination in 1988 and served as vice president under President Clinton from 1993-2001. He narrowly lost the 2000 presidential campaign to George W. Bush, despite collecting more popular votes than the Texas Republican.

He's a richer man for his loss - literally. Gore is a senior adviser to Google Inc., a member of the Apple Computer Inc., board and co-founder and chairman of an investment firm.

Some Democrats aren't ready to count him out.

"If he's the guy we see today, I think he'd be formidable," says Joe Trippi, a Democratic consultant who helped run Howard Dean's Internet-fueled presidential campaign in 2004. "I think the real danger is if he were to run as an independent. If he did that, he would wreak havoc on the race in 2008."

Kathleen Sullivan, chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, said Gore looks better each day Bush is president.

"For some people, it took six years of George Bush to wake up and realize that Al Gore was the real deal," Sullivan said.

Privately, senior Democrats put long odds on Gore – who was both a Congressman and a Senator - running and winning the Democratic nomination.

Speculation about his future heightened last weekend when Gore opened NBC's "Saturday Night Live" with a skit in which he pretended to be the president of the United States, looking back on six years of accomplishments.

No global warming. No war in Iraq. No budget deficits. And gasoline at 19 cents a gallon.

Even so, he joked, there would be one big national crisis under a President Gore: "Glaciers that once were melting are now on the attack."