The most awkward reunion since Gary Dotson and Cathy Crowell Webb refused a hug on the Early Show happens Monday, November 26.

[T]he President and former Vice President will meet at the place where Gore once thought he had enough votes to sit — the Oval Office. Bush is expected to congratulate Gore and other US Nobel Peace Prize winners in a ceremony.

It’s no secret that President Bush doesn’t see eye-to-eye with most of Gore’s talking points on the issue of climate change.

What’s probably going to defuse this neutron bomb of discomfiture is the fact that the Goracle shared the prize with a UN agency, whose representatives will be present and, probably, plentiful. That’ll give each of them a human buffer zone from the other, although a painful handshake and a few cringing jokes about the oddness of the moment will be obligatory.

Rhetorical exit question: If the Goracle seizes the moment by getting in Bush’s face and speaking half-truths to power, will it qualify as a Colbert moment (good!) or a Bollinger moment (baaaad)?