Seven years ago, I had one of those cocktail party conversations with a Nader supporter which odds seem to favor occurring again in '08. It's to do with the price you pay for forcing a wide array of opinions into just two camps versus throwing the game open to compartmentalized interests, coalition building between strange bedfellows and other sometimes undesired consequences.

Al Gore was hardly the movie star he's become, and then was a more innocent time when super-frequent rotation of Limbaugh skits on a change to earth-toned clothing and a favorable Putin-esque look from Oprah could turn an electorate. Ralph Nader and his 2.7% share of voters made the case that there was too much sameness between the two parties. No, Al Gore didn't fight dirty like Bush. That's just one difference.

Gore couldn't shake the machinations of the right, who portrayed him as pimping for Clinton and somehow soiling the White House himself. George Bush had more success shaking the notion of his improbability as a candidate.

There comes a time when you just don't take the bullying and prick the bubbles of your opponent's propaganda. Gore, unfortunately, waited eight years and wrote a book. But at the time, despite the luster of his candidacy, or lack thereof, it was clear to many that the country would be in for a restructuring of major proportions with the other. Sorry, Mr. Nader.

While you shouldn't ever question an individual political choice (especially when a guest at someone's cocktail party), there just seemed to be so much backlog from the abruptly ended era of Reaganism for me to be complacent about Nader's central theme.

I thought Gore was hands down a better candidate than the current president.

As it has turned out, I was naive to think the restructuring I feared would be in just one sector, like banking.

Who knew the Republicans had hitched their wagon to an improbable candidate whose prime motivation was to surmount the father's wimp reputation and go for proxy emperor? One answer is that it was known to readers of the Dallas Morning News, Molly Ivins and the like.

I've a hunch it was well known to the infamous oil summiteers and those others who haunt the shadows of this administration.

If it would make him just go away, we should all run to our open windows, à la Network, mad as hell and not taking it anymore, and shout "okay, okay, uncle! Not a wimp!"

Because Bush is one bionic duck and not fading away at the pace one might wish.

The astounding thing to me now is how the current crop of Republican candidates invoke Reagan at every chance. It is as though Bush were an aberration and not a logical extension of those twelve formative years.

We were supposed to be a government of, for, and by the people, not of learned lines.

Yet how quickly people still proffer that talk radio mythology in spite of the realities in front of their noses. We should be done with people who privately laugh at the concept of the common wealth and then go out and trick a plurality of the citizenry to eschew it as well.

Thanks to them, we live in an age when international bankers operate with full immunity from justice.

What we don't need right now is more mindless cheerleading. ("Trickle, trickle. Down, down, down.")

In Texas, they refer to people like Dubbya as a "pat you on the back - pee on your leg" kinda feller. We'll look forward with anticipation to his memoirs.

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