In a March 21 New York Times article about former Vice President Al Gore's scheduled testimony before several congressional committees on the issue of climate change, reporters Mark Leibovich and Patrick Healy called Gore's return to Capitol Hill “akin to a recovering alcoholic returning to a neighborhood bar” and asserted: “His hair is slicked back in a way that accentuates the new fullness of his face.” Healy also wrote: “The prospect of another Gore campaign provides grist for critics to impugn his motives.”

From the March 21 New York Times article:

For Mr. Gore, who calls himself a “recovering politician,” returning to Capitol Hill is akin to a recovering alcoholic returning to a neighborhood bar. He will, in all likelihood, deliver his favorite refrain about how “political will is a renewable resource” and how combating global warming is the “greatest challenge in the history of mankind.” He will confront one of his fervent detractors, Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, who derides Mr. Gore as an alarmist.

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Almost everywhere he goes these days, Mr. Gore is met with the fuss of a statesman. His hair is slicked back in a way that accentuates the new fullness of his face. At the hotel, Mr. Gore's perma-smile folded his narrow eyes into slits as he milled his way into a ballroom. Afterward, he accepted his customary standing ovation, slipped out a back door and into the back of a Lincoln Town Car, looking almost presidential.

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Not that that will stop anyone from speculating, or hoping. “I don't think he's shut the door on it either,” said Laurie David, the producer of “An Inconvenient Truth,” the Oscar-winning documentary on global warming starring Mr. Gore, “although that might just be wishful thinking on my part.”

The prospect of another Gore campaign provides grist for critics to impugn his motives. “He feels that global warming is his ticket to the White House,” said Mr. Inhofe, the ranking Republican on the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works.