The media (and political) guessing game continues:

Will he, or won’t he? Will Oscar-winning but Supreme Court-judgment-losing Al Gore turn what seems to be an increasingly popular no-holds-barred political book into an intervention, of sorts, for Democrats as dissatisfied over their candidates as Republicans are over theirs (although GOP dissatisfaction runs far deeper)?

Some insist he WILL run. After all, look at the “red meat” Gore is throwing out there in his book. See the way he’s all over the place on cable. About the only show he hasn’t appeared on yet is American Idol and perhaps he’ll show up in AI’s early auditions next season (Paula will like him).

But newspaper politics reporter and top-notch blogger Dick Polman, in a piece that needs to be read in full, says: hold your horses (or donkeys, as the case may be):

Message to Goreheads, and to all the other nostalgic Democrats who somehow forget that he was widely reviled in 2000 for failing to parlay years of peace and prosperity into victory:

He ain’t running next year. Get over it.

He performed last night on the friendly confines of Larry King’s CNN show, and it’s clear he is having a grand old time. He’s playing the media the way Herbie Hancock tickles the piano keys, with the deft touch of a seasoned pro. He knows that he can continue to stoke maximum attention for himself, and for his big-picture concepts, if he simply plays along with the will-he-or-won’t-he guessing game. He also knows that the some of the same media folks pining for his ’08 entry today would commence to tear him apart if he actually stepped into the ring. So it’s a win-win for Gore; he perpetuates the tease, by signaling that he really has no interest in running, while stopping just short of a Shermanesque refusal. (Gore to King: “I’m not thinking about being a candidate….I haven’t ruled it out for all time.”) Then it’s on to the next venue.

Why on earth would Gore want to revisit the indignities of 2000, and risk new ones? He’s clearly thriving inside Goreworld, an environment of his own design where he can frame a mega-message as he sees fit, circulate it through channels of his choosing, and show up at handpicked events where he is inevitably lionized. He was never a natural politician, and the street rules of politics have not become more high-minded during his seven-year absence.

Polman (whose analyses are usually on-the-dime) makes the case throughout his piece that Gore is simply enjoying his new status — one where he can in-effect be himself.

And the book that many are saying absolutely MUST be a campaign launch document?

And nobody with a yen for traditional political combat would write a book like The Assault on Reason. The typical candidate tome, appearing on the eve of a presidential primary season, is filled with poll-tested swill and boilerplate passages such as “I believe that America’s best days are ahead of us” and “Together, we can forge a new tomorrow,” or whatever. Gore’s book, by contrast, is a scathing putdown of the prevailing American culture, everything from television’s obsession with celebrity trivia, the average citizen’s couch-potato propensities, and the average politician’s willingness to play on voters’ fears with the help of propaganda techniques perfected by “a new generation of media Machiavellis.”

Nor would a prospective candidate pepper his book with quotes from German philosophers, 17th-century British essayists and poets, or from academic neuroscientists who specialize in researching the pain-sensing neurons of the brain. That’s just the kind of smarty-pants stuff that people didn’t like about Gore in 2000, back when they seemed to think that Bush was better because he’d be more fun to drink brewskis with. But Gore is happy to invoke the heavy thinkers now, because he’s free of his political restraints.

Read it all.

Polman is correct. There is a kind of verbal ballet in American politics. Candidates who REALLY say what they think and feel and don’t operate within certain, understood constraints soon come to regret it and must veer themselves back into the accepted circles of speech, positions, and attitude. He who is too candid later may be forced to apologize or say he/she didn’t mean it.

Witness the 2007 edition of Presidential wannabe John McCain, for instance. If McCain fails to get the nomination, it’ll be because he reined-in what seemed to be his refreshing, unpredictable candor to on some issues to try and be enough of a cookie-cutter Republican party man to appeal to the same GOP establishment that frantically rallied behind George Bush in 2000 to (a) keep the Bush franchise going as a GOP brand name and (b) to keep the (then) all-too-predictable McCain out.

Rudy Giuliani? On some of the issues he’s seemingly following the same pattern with apparent flip flops so visible that Wal-Mart may soon want to manufacture them and sell them at a discount. Here’s his latest.

The candidates and even non-candidates such as Gore are aware of the impact of the new milli-second news cycle, talk radio and now even weblogs. Many of them increasingly offer conference calls for bloggers.

(NOTE TO CANDIDATES: As of today not one candidate of any party has invited TMV in its nearly-four-year history to be in on a conference call…but then we’re not affiliated with any party or ideology so perhaps there is some justifiable fear that our cobloggers might not ask questions coming from the perspective of people who might already support them. It’s akin to those who will only read sites they already agree with. File this exclusionary decision in The Rotten PR File. In the past 10 days Gore, Giuliani and McCain had conference calls with selected bloggers. There is no post here on those talks since we were not in on the calls.).

But Polman’s column is the best explanation of what’s happening.

Al Gore is finding that influence is NOT exclusively attainable via the Oval Office. The ultimate influence is there. But it does seem as if Gore is going to pass on trying to become The Decider in favor of becoming The Influencer who will refuse to do the political verbal ballet politicos do to try to win votes, avoid losing votes, advance their candidacies, avoid angering the press, and undercut those who they’re runnning against.

Gore wants to focus on political content — which can be difficult when you run in a political race or if you surf the tube and watch talking head screechfests (people talking over and shouting at each other is considered thoughtful political dialogue on some of these shows. “Solutions shmolutions…it’s great TV!”).

The Inconvenient Truth may be that Al Gore is having fun, realizing he is more influential than ever, reaching bigger groups of people than he did when they knew he was trying to get their votes and taking some potshots at the way the American media operates.

And, these days, the unspoken message of Al Gore to many Americans is an increasingly strong, immediately graspable, and compelling one:

“I told you so.”