WASHINGTON - A puzzling aspect of Al Gore's declaration that he won't run for president again in 2004 was his further comment that he probably won't ever again seek the office that so narrowly - and controversially - eluded him in 2000.

While observing "never say never," Mr. Gore said the 2004 election that could have been a rerun against George W. Bush was "probably the last opportunity I'll ever have to run for president."

In practical political terms that could be so. A small army of other Democratic hopefuls has been waiting in the wings, some of whom will be running in 2004 and others looking further down the road to an eventual White House bid.

Mr. Gore's re-entry into the political conversation this fall was met with minimal enthusiasm among leading Democratic Party members. And although he was running ahead of the field in public opinion polls, his lead could be attributed to his much higher name recognition.

Yet the former vice president is only 54 years old and, from all appearances, in robust health. If President Bush is elected to a second term, Mr. Gore will be only 60 by the time the 2008 election rolls around - nine years younger than Ronald Reagan was when he assumed the presidency. Even if a Democrat is elected in 2004 and serves two full terms, Mr. Gore will be only 63 at the start of the 2012 campaign, hardly a venerable age these days.

While Mr. Gore said in withdrawing that he believed he could beat Mr. Bush the second time around, the wide assessment right now is that he could not. Mr. Gore observed that a rematch "would inevitably involve a focus on the past" that would not be an advantageous one.

That remark could be interpreted as saying he'd rather not face Mr. Bush, just as Richard Nixon, after losing to John F. Kennedy in 1960, decided he did not want to take him on again in 1964.

According to Nixon intimates later, he ran for governor of California in 1962 not as a stepping-stone to another presidential bid in 1964 but as a hiding place, with his eye on 1968 for a second White House try.

That strategy was foiled when Mr. Nixon lost the governor's race and thereafter held his infamous "last press conference" in which he, like Mr. Gore the other day, said goodbye to political office - but less cordially, by telling the press "you won't have Nixon to kick around anymore." As it turned out, however, he did run for president again in 1968 and made it.

Mr. Nixon, also like Mr. Gore today, had plenty of party and public fences to mend as a private citizen, and from 1963 to 1968 he did so diligently. But Mr. Nixon in 1968 had a fairly clear path to the GOP nomination. The most prominent Republican of the day, Barry Goldwater, had been roundly defeated in 1964, and his two remaining major party foes, George Romney and Nelson Rockefeller, never really got out of the gate in 1968.

Also, the Democrats were so sorely wounded by Lyndon Johnson's handling of the stalemated Vietnam War and by antiwar and civil rights turmoil in the streets at home that Mr. Nixon, even with all the dislike and distrust of him throughout his public life, managed to win.

It's conceivable that the president could be brought down in 2004 by a rocky economy, as in his father's failed bid for re-election in 1992, or by unforeseen foreign policy or military fiascoes. But right now, George W. is flying high and the better part of political valor seems to recommend that Mr. Gore stay on the sidelines.

In 1992, however, the senior Mr. Bush also was in the stratosphere in the polls because of his success in the Persian Gulf war, and popular Democrats such as Mario Cuomo backed off challenging him. Into the breach stepped a small-state governor named Bill Clinton, who was rewarded for his audacity.

It may be that Mr. Clinton's old running mate really does intend to walk away from his presidential dream forever. But if he is still haunted by what happened to him in 2000, and occasionally recalls how Mr. Nixon picked himself up and came back, it won't be too surprising if at some future point the country gets another chance to kick Al Gore around again.

Jules Witcover writes from The Sun's Washington bureau. His column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.