WASHINGTON — I was driving up Wisconsin Avenue Saturday afternoon, feeling sorry for myself.

I decided to do what all yuppies do when they wallow in meaningless bouts of self-pity during the holidays: drown my sorrows in an overpriced gingerbread latte at Starbucks.

Suddenly a dark green Secret Service Suburban with a flashing light cut in front of me. Was Madeleine Albright out Christmas shopping? Was Hillary townhouse hunting? Was Alan Greenspan bar-hopping?

Nah.

It was just Al Gore. Our secluded yet ubiquitous vice president.

He was walking up the block with Tipper and his daughter Kristin, their breaths clouding the air. Nobody was honking or stopping to get out and cheer him on. Everybody was pretty much ignoring the trio, except the people paid to watch them — the Secret Service vans and police cars dotting the street all the way up to Gore's old high school, St. Alban's, and Starbucks, where, it turned out, they were also headed.

Seeing Al trudging up the hill in the cold, just 537 votes short of his prize, Sisyphus pushing his burden to Starbucks, instantly put my petty problems in perspective.

I mean, the man has gone from being Powerful Second-in-Command of Prosperous, Happy Country to Obsessive Loon Whose Monomaniacal Quest Has Led Him to the Edge of Madness.

You see the vice president now and you think of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "The General in His Labyrinth," a fictionalized account of the last days of Simn Bolivar. After being rejected by his people for overreaching in an annoying way, Bolivar goes on a boat voyage and becomes ever more isolated and confused about what actually happened and what might have been.

It's sad to picture Al Gore, his brain all caked, locked up in his spooky vice-presidential mansion frantically crunching the numbers and e-mailing on his Blackberry and laptops and speed-dialing Tallahassee. Now even Lieberman the Loyal seems to be edging away.

I fear that Tipper and Karenna may be humoring Al, busily planning their inaugural parade, with recyclable floats, chad confetti, Poet Laureate Jesse Jackson, and Grand Marshal Tommy Lee Jones.

Enough.

Al, babe, snap out of it.

We know you won. W. hasn't given it much thought. Jeb and Katherine know better than anyone that you won. Even Trent Lott, sashaying around W.'s ranch in that unforgettable plumed cowboy chapeau and jeans ensemble, knows you won.

But you lost. If voter intent could be tabulated, you would have won. But it can't be. Your crusade is working, but only perversely.

Yes, you won the popular vote by 300,000, three times the margin of JFK over Nixon. Yes, you've persuaded us that more voters turned out for you in Florida than for W.

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But you are not going to make that move down the West Wing hall.

Your stars, yourself and your Brutus (Ralph Nader) have conspired to deny you the presidency.

Why aren't people who think you deserve it more outraged to see you denied it?

Because the more you insist you're a winner who somehow found a million different weird ways not to win, the more you seem like a loser.

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