Today, Al Gore gets to try out the room he thought he’d won seven years ago.

President Bush is meeting with Mr. Gore for a private one-on-one in the Oval Office this afternoon, just prior to hosting all of the Nobel Prize winners in his White House office.

It is the first private meeting ever between the two men, said White House press secretary Dana Perino, and their first interaction since the dedication of President Clinton’s library in Little Rock, Ark., on Nov. 18, 2004.

Mr. Gore, Mr. Clinton’s vice president for both terms, ran against Mr. Bush in 2000 and won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote, in one of the most bitterly disputed elections in U.S. history.