Al Gore is in trouble. Well, maybe it's more accurate to say his campaign is in trouble still. Heading into their Los Angeles convention, which begins Monday, Democrats are no longer so quick to relax furrowed brows with sprightly assurances that the Vice President of the United States, who has held his job for eight years and been seriously plotting his bid for promotion for the past two, has plenty of time yet to impress the voters. Or how about this one? "Just wait for the debates," Gore supporters have been saying for months.
The Gore team may almost wish for a little national strife, since peacetime and prosperity appear to be doing so little to help the Vice President make his case. Even some Republicans sound incredulous that George W. Bush's challenge is proving so potent. "I still think it's Gore's to lose," insisted one GOP political consultant during Bush's skillfully staged and largely treacly-sweet Philadelphia convention a week ago.
For Gore, trouble amounts to trailing the other guy less than a week before the Democratic convention. Trouble is the squeeze of the Electoral College math, based on today's state-by-state polling. Trouble is voter apathy and suburban women and Ralph Nader and the so-called leadership gap and the President of the United States, who is both too reviled and too beloved to make even the simplest things simple.
Now it comes down to this: 87 days until Nov. 7. Eighty-seven days to play start-up, catch-up, patch-up - whatever will work to rescue a campaign that has had a hundred beginnings, three headquarters, too many managers, and seemingly little cruising altitude. "There's not much time," cautioned former White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta. "Coming out of the convention, if Al Gore is getting traction, he'll be in good shape. If he's not getting traction, you're not talking about a hell of a lot of time to turn things around."
Polls early this week showed Bush stretching his lead against Gore both before and during the GOP convention, which raises the stakes for the Vice President heading into his own convention. But a Gallup Poll later in the week underscored the volatility of public sentiment about what may essentially be a dead-heat race: Gore pulled to within 2 points of Bush after the media reported the addition of Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut to the Gore ticket. As many political observers are quick to point out, the senior George Bush was trailing Michael Dukakis by a double-digit margin in July 1988 before rebounding to win the election.
Lieberman -a centrist, a moralist, an individualist, a Jew-was probably the closest thing to a qualified, compatible "wow" running mate Gore was likely to turn up to go mano a mano with Bush and Dick Cheney. While Bush's selection of Cheney displayed his confidence in selecting someone whose experience and personality differ from his own-a partner prized more for his potential skills in governing than in campaigning-Gore's choice of Lieberman is intended to speak to both needs.
In Lieberman, Gore found attributes familiar and prized: Senate experience, familiarity with Washington, driving ambition, civility and rectitude, and a thoughtful, sometimes philosophical take on today's shopworn politics. Lieberman would be effective at governing, sure, but more important, Gore needs an anti-Clinton to help him tell his campaign story to voters, and that's where the kindly passions and occasional sanctimony of the Connecticut lawmaker figure most prominently.
"The whole argument Bush was making-diversity? Well, Joe Lieberman is diversity. Bipartisanship? Joe Lieberman is bipartisan. Faith and values? Joe Lieberman lives it. Character and integrity? Joe Lieberman is character and integrity," said Democratic pollster Mark S. Mellman. "I think it just pulled the rug out from under Bush in a big way."
Gore had to do something to draw media attention away from Bush's lead in the polls and his largely heralded choice of Cheney, as well as the Republicans' much-ballyhooed convention extravaganza. Democrats have denounced Cheney as a member of big oil (as the recently departed chairman of Dallas' Halliburton Co.), as Old Republican, and as too far right to share Bush's "compassionate conservative" mantle. But Republicans cheered the Cheney selection, and members of both parties agree that Cheney is smart and experienced. For his part, the former Defense Secretary and Wyoming congressman-better known for his management skills than for his scintillation-went out and somewhat dramatically delivered a convention speech that exposed the incisors behind his thin-lipped smile.
Now it's Gore's turn, with Lieberman, to start fresh on his campaign and to create some momentum going into and coming out of the four-day convention in Los Angeles. Gore "has to say, 'Here is what I'm about. This is who I am,' in a period [in which] people are really, really, not paying attention to this," said William M. Daley, Gore's campaign chairman.
The Democrats have in mind a gathering that will showcase the "real people" for whom Gore is fighting on the stump, plus the powerful people elected to the House and Senate, whom the Vice President will showcase as Democratic leaders performing jujitsu with a hard-edged GOP majority in Congress. Expect town-hall-style policy discussions, lots of specifics about the distinctions between the two parties, and plenty of talk about how the diversity seen on stage comports with the makeup of the Democratic delegates and the party at large. Democrats patented "rainbow," and they'll attempt to prove they adhere to it.
Following the Republicans' convention also means that Gore's backers will be tempted to counter the Bush-Cheney critiques of the Clinton Administration's policy record, as well as the GOP's effort to tether Gore firmly to the President's character failings and scandals. The risk of rebuttals is that they sound divisive and negative. Focus groups held during the GOP convention indicated that aggressive campaigning can hurt a party's efforts to woo independent and swing voters. Democrats, in other words, will need to contrast their proposals with those of Bush and the GOP Congress without going for the jugular. Gore "has got to lay out that record without sounding nasty and without attacking the personalities of Bush or Cheney," Panetta said. "I think that's where you get into trouble, and to some extent, the whole Bush effort is to try to set up that kind of attack."
It is not hyperbole to say that Gore has a lot riding on the Democrats' convention, since his standing in the polls around Labor Day will be viewed by many as a historically relevant predictor of the contest's outcome in November. Already, political insiders' talk of a neck-and-neck race is giving way, ever so slightly, to the whispered supposition that Gore will lose and Bush will win. Based on the state of the nation and Gore's White House service, insiders say that Gore should be the victor. But the way the two campaigns have developed, coupled with Bush's rhetorical glissade into the center of American politics, scrambles all bets. "If you look at the underlying structural factors against the background of history, Al Gore should win this race, but my gut has some questions about that; I'm not always so sure that my head is right," said one rueful Democratic observer.
The caveat, popular for a year or more, is that the electorate is so tuned out, turned off, and desultory that almost any eleventh-hour conversion is possible. And if conversion fails, Gore and Bush will each depend on the activism and commitment of diehards within his respective party. So far, Bush seems to have the more motivated band of faithfuls.
So What's Wrong With Gore?
To paraphrase a Clinton slogan used almost eight years ago to describe America, there is nothing wrong with Al Gore that cannot be cured by what's right with Al Gore. Bush and Clinton may be impediments to easy victory, but they are not to blame for the ditch Gore finds himself in. Overcoming setbacks and difficulties is what successful political campaigns are about, and Gore is still, perpetually, feeling his way.
"Gore's problem is Gore," said Andrew Kohut, the director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. The 1996 fund-raising abuses and post-impeachment Clinton fatigue "are factors in Gore's tough times," Kohut concedes, but voters' reservations about the Vice President have much to do with the way he presents himself and how he communicates, rather than his baggage. Negative, strident, political, pandering (his ill-conceived injection of himself during the Elián González debate, for example) -these are the perceptions voters have about Al Gore. "He hasn't done a really good job of presenting himself as a candidate that people can be comfortable with," Kohut said.
"If he hasn't figured out by now how to connect with people, he doesn't deserve to be President," said one frustrated former White House official who backs Gore. The Vice President may have adopted populist themes for his campaign, but the folksy touch that more recently has been successful for Gore at his campaign stops has yet to be witnessed by most voters. Bush's overwhelming success in the style contest has some Gore supporters wishing that he would turn the tables and try to make his limited, paint-by-numbers campaign artistry work to his benefit. Why not just good-naturedly admit he's not a natural politician on the stump, but assert that he should be trusted to govern intelligently and effectively, and deliver on promises?
"I think to some extent, Al Gore has to say, 'I'm not Bill Clinton. I don't have some of the same capabilities that he had, and I certainly don't have some of his problems, so, to that extent, I'm different. But when it comes to the issues he fought for, I believe he was fighting the right battles and I'm going to continue to fight the same battles, and that's what I care about,' " Panetta suggested. "You can't try to be who you're not. Of course, all your consultants basically get paid to tell you not to be yourself."
The guy who's knocked for claiming to invent the Internet, for wearing his Palm Pilot on his belt, and for earnestly rummaging through the worlds of chaos theory and the theology of Reinhold Niebuhr should be able to translate his geekiness into something akin to vision (Bush calls it "purpose") and leadership. But for the most part, Gore is on the stump in cowboy boots and casual shirts, talking up the glories of grandparenthood and shooting down big-money "special interests." The expressed "vision" that most assertively clings to memory is Gore's certainty that his opponent would cast the nation asunder.
The gap voters perceive between Bush and Gore on qualities of "leadership" is significant and important. In some recent surveys, the distance between the governor of Texas and the sitting Vice President was 30 points, which is actually more of a gulf than a gap. "Leadership," for voters, is rather nebulous but is entwined with character, vision, principled stands, and an inner compass. Voters give Bush wide latitude here, and not just because Gore suffers from the anonymity that befalls all Vice Presidents who labor, essentially, as helpmates.
"The reason people think Bush is a better leader-they say he has new ideas, can solve problems at higher rates than Gore-I think it has to do with communications," Kohut said, "not because of what people know about Bush and Gore's records. Who knows the specifics of [Bush's] record in Texas, and who can identify what a Vice President has actually done?"
Much has been made of Gore's continued efforts to shore up his Democratic base, while surveys show Bush has the support of more than 90 percent of registered Republicans. The smell of victory and the agonies of living in the wilderness for the past eight years have motivated Republican voters, whatever their specific reservations may be about Bush-"a new kind of Republican." To African-Americans, among the most reliable of Democratic voters, Gore is no Bill Clinton; to some women, Gore is too much like Clinton; to organized labor, he is both-too much and too little like his boss.
It is there, with the Democratic base, that some of Gore's difficulties come into starkest relief. Lieberman potentially muddies the waters a bit, because he is a centrist "New Democrat," as is Gore, and not a traditional liberal. Lieberman is a free-trader, as is Gore, which endears neither man to organized labor. And the Senator from Connecticut has favored experimentation with vouchers for public or private schools, which Gore opposes himself and which teachers' unions bitterly reject. The Gore campaign, and the Vice President's backers among organized labor, choose to focus on Lieberman's entire voting record (not the issues of communion with Bush), while insisting the running mate will support Gore's policies.
In recent focus-group surveys, the AFL-CIO has found that union members largely track the rest of the general public in their appreciation of Bush and Gore and their lack of clarity about the issue differences between the two candidates. When told more specifically where each candidate stands on "issues that affect working people, like raising the minimum wage, health care, prescription drugs," labor members' support for Bush proves to be soft, said Steven Rosenthal, the AFL-CIO's political director. "They move very quickly."
The AFL-CIO will spend $46 million on election outreach to members in 1999 and 2000, according to confirmed reports. This week, organized labor is stepping up its efforts to distribute fliers to union members explaining the candidates' key policy positions. The United Auto Workers, which has fiercely opposed the Administration on its trade policies, is expected this week to endorse Gore, which would be a huge lift to the Vice President's prospects in key Midwestern battleground states. In Michigan, for example, the union share of the vote could approach 40 percent.
The emphasis on issue differences-the counterweight to the stylistic superiority of Bush-is at the heart of Gore's campaign and is part of his response to those voters who say they appreciate the policies of the Clinton-Gore Administration but object to Bill Clinton. It is a difficult needle to thread, and Lieberman's arrival on the ticket should help Gore's efforts. A Zogby International poll conducted from Aug. 4-6 found that 64 percent of respondents believe Clinton's campaigning for Gore makes no difference in their likely vote in November. But almost 29 percent said they would be less, or much less, likely to vote for Gore if Clinton campaigns for his Vice President. In the same survey, more than 46 percent agreed with the statement, "Al Gore deserves to be defeated because the Clinton-Gore Administration has lowered the nation's morals with a series of scandals." Forty percent agreed with the statement, "Al Gore deserves to be elected President because the Clinton-Gore Administration has presided over unprecedented economic prosperity." Almost 14 percent agreed with neither.
"Clinton fatigue is real, and Gore is on the receiving end of it to a certain extent," Kohut said. "The correlation between Gore's standing in the polls and Clinton's favorability ratings is higher than it is to his approval ratings, which is unlike what it was 12 years earlier, when [then-Vice President] Bush was tied to Reagan's approval ratings, not his favorability ratings. So, it's there, but at this point, the bigger thing is how Gore is presenting himself."
Not Out Of Reach
Gore has by no means lost this election, or rather, Bush has not yet locked it up. But the next few weeks are critical to Gore's 10th opportunity to make a first impression. The Lieberman selection, the convention, then the debates could all help the Democratic nominee shore up his case for why he should become the nation's 43rd President. But Bush is running a no-mistakes general election campaign thus far, and Gore is going to have to elevate his game.
Analysts and observers agree that Gore will benefit if Clinton stays on the sidelines and quits sniping at the Bush-Cheney ticket. Gore will also be helped if he defines his own brand of leadership and talks less about Bush's. He'll benefit if voters can be made to see some distinction between Bush's "Prosperity With a Purpose" sloganeering, and Gore's "Peace and Prosperity" argument for Clinton-Gore-and-a-little-bit-more.
Gore still has time to turn the underdog campaign to advantage, especially when most polling shows that the majority of voters are still making up their minds about both of the major-party candidates. "[Gore] needs to get out with a small, core group and fight," said Democratic campaign consultant Raymond D. Strother. "He needs to roll up his sleeves and admit that he's behind."
There are 87 days in which to do just that.