Vice President Gore’s speech to the Commonwealth Club of California suggests he is a man who may not fully appreciate the presidency he supposedly wants to make a second try for. He spent much of the speech arguing that President Bush is over-reaching in his doctrine that America has not only the right but the responsibility to pre-empt attacks being planned against it. Irrespective of the merits of plans to target any particular regime, it’s passing strange to see a man seek to reduce the powers and boldness of the office he aspires to hold. When one considers the question, moreover, it’s hard to think of any of the great presidents who didn’t seek to enlarge the powers of his office at the expense of the legislative branch. Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Reagan, in the inevitable pull and tug with Congress, these were men who sided with the executive against both Congress and the courts, on matters ranging from federal authority over the states to habeas corpus to dominion over the economy to war powers. In his speech in California, Mr. Gore suggested that Mr. Bush was advancing the notion in international affairs that “there is no law but the discretion of the president of the United States.” Mr. Bush, in fact, is advancing no such notion. It’s a reminder that when one sees a man running for president and arguing that the presidency doesn’t have authority, one sees a man who better belongs in the Congress, a branch where Mr. Gore once prospered.