Gore: Bush Loses Terror Focus (washingtonpost.com)

2000 Rival Says Focus on Iraq Aided GOP but Not Nation

On his political future:

Gore said he has learned an important lesson that he will apply to a future campaign, if he decides to run. Political compromise and offering bold solutions to problems are both virtues, Gore said, adding: "I think I'm better at the latter than the former, so I've decided that if I do run again I'm going to do the latter and not worry so much about the former."

Gore said he favors scrapping future installments of the Bush tax cuts aimed at top income earners, and acknowledged that he should have said so explicitly before the election. He said he pulled his punches on the tax cut issue this fall because at the time he was urging Bush to seek a bipartisan midcourse correction on the economy. He said he was not responding to requests from Daschle and Gephardt, although both men had opposed making the tax cut issue central to the midterm elections

Reflecting on criticism by the media and Democratic insiders, Gore said he knows he must prove to both that he will not repeat the mistakes of 2000.

"If I became a candidate," he said, "I would have to convince both groups that I have learned enough from what I've been through to run a much stronger and more open and more effective campaign than I did in 2000. I don't think there's anything I can say that would change the opinion of either group. I think that the proof would be in the pudding of what kind of campaign I ran and what kind of candidate I was."

Gore is sounding better and better.