Don't cry for me, Al Gore, I am so over you.

Yes, you made my heart weep for what could have been for years. And it's almost all your fault, sir, the 2000 election and its consequences. Your pride came before the country's fall.

Call it a liberal lament, but when I hear the man rustling around in public, making noises about how broken democracy is, then I see red, white and blue (and green) stars in the sky. The Nobel Peace Prize winner, strangely, can't wash traces of the Iraq War blood clean from his hands.

Go there with me for a moment: Imagine a President Gore with a steady hand, steering the country through 21st-century shoals.

For sure, we would not have invaded Iraq. For sure, without that long war, morale and the economy would be more buoyant. Safe to say the government emergency response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans would have been more swift than shoddy. We might not have the nightmare of Guantanamo. Perhaps our civil liberties would be more robust. Certainly, we'd be taking serious action in the face of climate change. That's the short list.

The tragic things that happened over eight years of the George W. Bush presidency were such a close call. As you remember, Gore won the popular vote by half a million votes and could have won the whole thing. If he had not turned his back on President Bill Clinton — whose vice president he was during an era of peace and prosperity — then likely we wouldn't have fallen into the Bush briar patches from Sept. 11, 2001 onward.

The Bush presidency was defined by one day, by how he defined that day. Almost from the beginning, he was a proud "war president," he told the American people.

The 2000 election and the narrow 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that decided Bush v. Gore and stopped the Florida vote-counting was wrested in a brazen one-vote political victory. At the time, I felt it was biblical, like the seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. The 21st century has not been a picnic for most of the American people.

But fear not, we are not alone. Gore is also alarmed by our plight today. Listen to what he just declared in Chicago: "The American political system is an utter catastrophe," he said. "Our democracy has been hacked. The country is utterly and completely paralyzed, hogtied."

Hogtied. Yes. The Politico columnist Roger Simon, published by Creators Syndicate, reported that Gore was energized, letting it rip with strong stuff. His "country-style" speech was a crowd pleaser.

This is the bitter (without the sweet) part for me. I can't forget or forgive that Gore felt morally superior to Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and he wanted the world to know it. Never mind that Clinton would have won a third term if he could have run. Gore actually refused to let Clinton campaign for him, the master politician shuttered in the stable.

Gore wanted to win all on his own. For that he came a cropper, losing even his home state, Tennessee, and Clinton's Arkansas. If Gore had let Clinton campaign in either or both those states, either would have given him the margin of victory.

Then there was "The Kiss" shared by Al and Tipper Gore at the Democratic National Convention in 2000. Overblown, it was aimed as an arrow at the Clintons and their troubles, to assert their blue-chip marital status. Ironically, the Clintons are still together and the Gores are no longer one.

This must be said in Gore's defense. In 2000, the press traveling with Gore was sour. They helped him lose the tied race. They just didn't like him, which colored their coverage in an irresponsible, skewed way. On the other campaign plane, the genial Bush was popular with the press troops. As Chris Matthews said, he's the guy you'd rather have a beer with. Really smart. Democracy is fragile when it comes down to that.

Gore's pride took a bad fall — but the shame is, so did we all.

To find out more about Jamie Stiehm, and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com