A Run, or the Runaround?

"Does he say he's a candidate? No. Does he mean it? Yes. He's not being coy. He's not being cute. He's being totally honest," Cuomo said of Bloomberg. Then, stressing the next two words, he added: " Right now, I'm not running."

Gore, too, has become a master of the art.

"I don't plan to be a candidate again. I haven't completely ruled out that possibility, but I don't expect to be a candidate," he said at a conference last week, part of his globe-trotting, book-promoting and preaching about the dangers of global warming.

Those closest to the former vice president are split about whether they think the man who won the popular vote in 2000 wants to make another run at the job. Several agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity because Gore has not authorized them to comment publicly about his non-candidacy.

"He can walk into this race in September and finance this race himself and be in the top tier of candidates immediately," said one former senior staffer. "I think that he is very deliberately keeping that option open."

Another, however, said he has "seen nothing, nothing in the orbit of Al Gore to indicate that anybody's exploring anything."

So if Gore has no interest in a campaign, why doesn't he just say so?

"By keeping the door ajar, he certainly helps magnify attention . . . on an issue that he really deeply cares about," said Chris Lehane, a former Gore spokesman, who said Gore is doing "a brilliant job" of stoking interest in himself and his causes.

Meanwhile, in the months since Thompson's name first bounced around Washington as a possible Republican candidate for president, the actor has slowly built interest with well-placed leaks about a growing political staff, developing campaign strategy and a $5 million fundraising target.

"Fred Thompson's carefully building the buzz and doing it much like you would roll out a big blockbuster," said Paul Dergarabedian, whose Los Angeles company tracks box-office numbers for movies. "It comes down to Marketing 101. It's about getting the marketplace in an anticipatory mood. Once you announce, it becomes a bigger deal than if you came out and just said, 'I'm going to be a candidate.' "

But Bloomberg, for now, has stolen the spotlight from the others -- announced and unannounced.

At the news conference, the mayor introduced the city employee who answered the 50 millionth citizen information call. "This will be the key story tomorrow in the paper," he told her, tongue clearly planted in cheek.

Then he asked her: "Do you have any aspirations for high office in government?"

She didn't answer either.