Al Gore may be the man who would be president were it not for Florida, a few hanging chads and the Supreme Court.

But it would be a mistake to dismiss Gore as a bitter partisan for his charge that President Bush — by authorizing warrantless spying on Americans — broke the law.

At the American Constitution Society in Washington on Monday, Gore sounded more like a true patriot by calling for an independent special prosecutor to look into the spy matter.

Since Watergate, it's been the tried and true way to get to the truth in Washington.

Now it's up to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Jr. to make the call and appoint one.

Short of that, Gonzales should immediately recuse himself from any Justice Department investigation on the matter.

Gonzales, a longtime Bush aide and former White House counsel, who both reviewed and defended the spying by the Bush administration's National Security Agency, is hardly unbiased in the quest for the truth.

Still, he could acquit himself well in the upcoming hearings called by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Gore urged his former colleagues to start "acting like the independent co-equal branch of government you're supposed to be." That means putting Gonzales through the wringer at the hearings.

Having served both in Congress and the executive branch, Gore knows, as do few Americans, precisely where the lines of power are drawn. His sense that Bush broke the law by ordering the NSA to monitor domestic phone calls without a warrant is not to be ignored.

That Bush insists he was right to bypass a court and authorize spying is troubling. Where does presidential power stop?

If the lines of our democracy are to remain straight and true, with no one branch of government overstepping its limit, an independent prosecutor may be the best way to find the truth and restore any breach.