I am Al Gore; I used to be the next president of the United States of America.

Al Gore delivered this line as a self-deprecating joke shortly after the contested 2000 U.S. presidential election, in which he won the national popular vote but lost the Electoral College to George W. Bush after the Florida recount dispute and the Supreme Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore. The quip plays on the campaign-era media habit of referring to him as “the next president” and on the abrupt reversal of fortune after his concession. Gore used humor like this in early post-election public appearances to acknowledge the widely discussed outcome while moving on to other work and speaking engagements.

The joke compresses a complex political trauma into a single ironic sentence: Gore identifies himself, then undercuts the expected prestige of “the next president” by shifting it into the past tense. The humor depends on the audience’s shared memory of the 2000 election’s uncertainty and the sense that history pivoted on procedural and legal decisions rather than a clear, decisive mandate. As a rhetorical move, it signals resilience and self-awareness, inviting laughter while also registering a lingering grievance and the fragility of political destiny. It reframes personal disappointment as public, almost absurd, historical contingency.