Bill Schneider: Is Al Gore leading the Democrats?

President Bush leads the Republican Party, but who is leading the Democrats? Al Gore held a political seminar for students over the weekend in Tennessee and said he'll join other Democrats in the next round of national elections. CNN's political analyst Bill Schneider joined CNN anchor Carol Lin to discuss Gore's future.

CAROL LIN: Bill, is this the guy that members of Congress, that Democrats want campaigning for them?

WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, it's certainly a new Al Gore, yet another one. This one, I suppose, wants to be warm and fuzzy. We certainly saw him fuzzy with that new beard.

But Democrats are asking where was Al during the debate over the environment? The environment is supposed to be his issue. And where was Al during the tax cut? The fact is a lot of Democratic donors and activists really don't want to hear from Al Gore because, look, their view is he's been AWOL during the debate over taxes and the environment. They blame him for losing the last election, an election he should have won, and a lot of them don't want to hear from him. But the fact is among rank and file Democrats, Gore does pretty well.

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We asked them last week, who do you prefer for the Democratic nomination in the year 2004 and Al Gore topped the list. He got a third of the vote. That's not the prohibitive favorite, but he's still on top of the list followed by Hillary Clinton, Bill Bradley, Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt. No other Democrat registered more than 10 percent, which means that Al Gore still has to be kind of the favorite for the 2004 nomination.

LIN: Well, speaking of an old favorite, boy, Bill Clinton, what $10 million, $12 million for this book deal?

SCHNEIDER: That's right, and the fact is they are not paying him that kind of money to have him write a book about, say, foreign trade. They want to get the goods. They want him to dish a little bit and talk about what it was like in the White House, about his own view of his experiences and that book's going to come out in the year 2003 just in time...

LIN: Yes, talk about timing, yes.

SCHNEIDER: Yes. Just in time to become an issue in the next election campaign. Al Gore has to get out from behind Clinton's shadow. I mean Clinton was a problem for him. Look, if there were no Clinton scandals, it is unimaginable that Gore would have lost the last election. So he does not need voters reminded of and debating the whole Clinton episodes again just before the next presidential campaign.

LIN: Bill, what do you make of the timing of him releasing the book in 2003 just in time for all these other candidates, including the Democrats, maybe even Al Gore, to declare that they might be running for president? I mean is this part of the blood feud between Clinton and Gore that's been reported on?

SCHNEIDER: I don't think it really has anything to do with Al Gore but I think it's an attempt to inject himself into the political debate. He believes he has a legacy and a record worth defending and he wants that record to be on the table right beside George Bush's record in 2004. So probably, in Clinton's view, the idea is do you want things the way they were under me or do you want things the way they are under President Bush? And he thinks that comparison will do him a lot of good and probably will help Democrats. If Gore won't run on Clinton's record, Clinton's going to put his record out there himself.

LIN: All right, so other than growing a beard, what does Al Gore need to do to define himself as his own man yet again?

SCHNEIDER: Well, he has to become the spokesman for the Democratic Party. That's where he's been missing for a while. I mean he's got to become the man who articulates how Democrats really feel, their objections, complaints about the Bush record. Nobody really speaks for Democrats. I mean we asked people who do you think is the leader of the Democratic Party? The answer is I don't know. That's not my answer, that's the Democrat's answer. Almost 60 percent said they had no idea who speaks for the Democratic Party and only 9 percent spontaneously named Al Gore. There is an opening there for someone to rally the party. That's what Gore's got to do and Bill Clinton really shouldn't crowd him out in that role.