If we can't have Al, give me Karenna

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So now we know for sure. Unless something extraordinary happens, Al Gore is not going to run for President. Though he refused to take questions on the subject when he made his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, his wife Tipper crying beside him, the message was clear. He has won an Oscar, he has won the Nobel (some might even say he won a Presidential election), despite the detractors who doubt parts of his environmental argument and the conservatives outraged by the Nobel committee's tendentious choices. But his body language said it all. Al Gore has risen from the earthly quagmire of politics and ascended to the pantheon of latter-day saints that includes Bono and Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton: the famous international do-gooders.

With Hillary Clinton surging in the polls and Barack Obama looking a popular second, he's not hearing the shouts of "encore" - so he will stay off the political stage and play with his fellow Olympians. Why not? He deserves it, after what he's been through.

But his decision is America's loss. We currently stand too weak to do much in the face of atrocities in Burma and are unable to decry Vladimir Putin's friendship with Iran, let alone sort out the muddle in the Middle East. There is a massive budget deficit and a recession looming. Frankly, none of the current would-be presidential candidates is up to handling such crises. So limited does the current line-up seem that now TV satirist Stephen Colbert has, only half-jokingly, thrown his hat into the ring.

Colbert's entrance signals that we need more than ever a leader of stature - perhaps not the Al Gore of 2000, but the Al Gore of 2007. However, for all those disheartened by his decision, there is a hope on the horizon in the petite blonde form of Gore's eldest daughter, Karenna, 34.

Many hope that Karenna - a lawyer and mother of three - will one day run for office. She has the political interest, the courage, the integrity, the brains and she oozes charisma and decency. She drove a hybrid mini-van long before her father even began shooting his movie. The last time we spoke she was scrubbing her kitchen floor; she's earnest and normal and one of the first people you'd want to have to a party. Her smile lights up the room.

Politics is in her blood; it's in her character. Her father has attained a redemption that seemed impossible after the 2000 election. Now perhaps it's the turn of a Gore woman to see if she can finish what he started.