IMPRESSIONS OF GORE.(Al Gore's speech at New York University)

The will-he-or-won't-he follies reached fever pitch last week, and amid the chaos and comedy of this season's incipient and aborted political candidacies--Gary Coleman, in; Jerry Springer, out; Larry Flynt, likely; Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hasta la vista, Gray Davis--it was perhaps easier to take seriously the call by the former New York governor Mario Cuomo for Al Gore to change his mind and enter the Presidential race. No matter that Cuomo, with his past equivocations, was an unlikely prod, or that Gore's spokesman had repeatedly denied that the former Vice-President would run again; Cuomo's plea arrived on the eve of a speech that Gore had personally requested the opportunity to deliver, and after a week of growing concern among Democrats that the front-runner, Howard Dean, is unelectable. What could be more perfect, now that Dean had demonstrated the previously untapped power of the Web as a fund-raising tool, than a revived campaign by the man who invented the Internet?

At 10 a.m. on Thursday, several hundred members of the liberal organization MoveOn filed in to the fourth floor auditorium at N.Y.U.'s Kimmel Center, on Washington Square, to hear Gore speak. They wore T-shirts with slogans such as "Liberal" and "Unfuzzy Math (Gore: 50,996,116; Bush: 50,456,169)." Gore's appearance, scheduled for eleven o'clock, would mark his first major public address since last September, when he was greeted by the Commonwealth Club, in San Francisco, with an impromptu a-cappella rendering of "Hail to the Chief"--and then delivered what was widely thought to be a disastrous speech. The pundits were invariably brutal--"self-contradictory pushmipullyu" (William Safire); "a pudding with no theme but much poison" (Charles Krauthammer)--and within a couple of months Gore had withdrawn from contention.

In the back of the auditorium, as the seats filled up, a group of mostly conservative reporters talked among themselves.

"So is this the center of the liberal universe?" one asked.

"I don't know, I usually think more of Columbia," another replied. They took turns speculating about what clues they'd soon be called upon to interpret. Beard or no beard? Earth tones or dark suit? Fat or thin?

At about quarter after eleven, following a brief introduction from the president of the N.Y.U. College Democrats ("This really is the peak of a tremendous year we've had. We started a community-service initiative . . ."), Gore sauntered into view from stage right, to a standing ovation. He was dressed in a dark pin-striped suit, with a red-and-blue tie, and was clean-shaven and medium-big. His hair appeared grayer, as he stepped behind the lectern and ...