... or maybe that should be "I'm a slutty technical virgin" waiting for Al Gore to notice me, while trying to keep John Edwards and Barack Obama interested in me, just in case.
Yes, it's getting harder and harder to keep my maidenhead intact, but my knight in shining armor smiled and winked at me a couple of times this week, so I'm holding out hope.
I'm using all this silly sexual metaphor in the most male heterosexual way, of course, and was inspired by this popular, recommended diary. But the fact remains - if Mr. Gore doesn't enter the race, my other suitors, while fine choices all (well, most of them anyway), will be second choices.
I want to make it clear, this is not a condemnation of John Edwards, and I'd really like to see the sometimes ugly bickering between supporters of Edwards and Gore to end. And the attacks against the other candidates too, for that matter. Edwards, Obama... hell, even Clinton and Richardson - even Dodd and Biden - all would make good presidents, possibly great ones.
But in `04 I settled for the guy who was a "good catch" on paper, the nice, competent, "good husband material" type of guy, when what I really wanted was the guy who made my heart go boom, who made me weak in the knees. And now that my metaphorical cherry has miraculously reappeared, I want it to be popped by the guy for whom I've been holding out hope, the guy who can be both, even when it has looked like that hope has been increasingly pie-in-the-sky.
Just as Winston Churchill emerged from what he called his "wilderness years" to lead Great Britain during its darkest hour, I'm hoping Al Gore, already stepping out of his own "wilderness years" (the time immediately after the `00 election, when he was being singled out for searches at airports, and the fools of this nation looked at him as the butt of their foolish jokes) with triumphant style, will lead us back to triumph in what is certainly the bleakest time of our last half century, if not in our entire history.
And like Churchill before him, there is no one more qualified, more appropriate, more cosmically right for the job. People like NeuvoLiberal can give you a more thorough, and more eloquent, explanation of why this is, of course - if you really need that after all this time. But I will say this: no one in the field of nominees has the same combination of intelligence, intellectual curiosity (not the same thing, and something completely absent from the White House since January `01), knowledge, passion, experience, and the ability to get out there and get things done. None has quite the same experience of having made mistakes, lost, and learned from that experience as Al Gore.
Our great nation is poised to be in a world of hurt soon; on my most pessimistic days, sometimes I think we may be too late to change the course of the disastrous road upon which the Bush Crime Family - and we, in our ignorance and complicity - has us hurtling recklessly. With our help and hard work, all of our candidates have it in them change this.
But I think of what we and Al Gore can do together, and I get almost giddy with optimism that, not only can we change course, not only can we undo the damage, but we can work together towards achieving an America more like this.
Please run, Al. We need you, and it's your duty.