Is Al Gore’s campaign in trouble? Join Newsweek political writers for a live, online discussion on Wednesday, May 19, noon EDT at www. newsweek.com. As he strives to hit stride in his young and stumble-prone campaign, Al Gore wants the world to see him as he evidently sees himself: as Tipper’s partner, not Bill’s. Seated in a wing-backed chair in his library, Gore speaks proudly of his 29-year marriage to Mary Elizabeth Aitcheson, who recently disclosed that years ago she was treated for clinical depression after her son nearly died in an auto accident. “I’m a better person when I’m with her,” he solemnly told NEWSWEEK, “and if the American people choose me to be president, I’ll be a better president with her. I can’t imagine undertaking any important challenge without her by my side.”
But Clinton is a rather different story–especially after last week. Without giving Gore a heads-up, the president called The New York Times to confirm that he had expressed concern about the veep’s campaign. The aim was a little freelance spindoctoring; the results were comically counterproductive. CLINTON ADMITS TO CONCERNS AS GORE CAMPAIGN STUMBLES read the front-page headline. The campaign, Clinton said, was “in a lot better shape than it was eight weeks ago”–thereby confirming many Democrats’ whispered complaints. Gore, privately, didn’t see the humor in the mishap. He was livid. When asked by NEWSWEEK what role Clinton would play in the campaign, Gore replied tartly, “He’s got a full-time job being president–and he’s doing it extremely well.”
Gore can’t afford many more early screw-ups. He continues to trail Texas Gov. George W. Bush in trial heats and to be dogged by the Democratic-nomination bid of Bill Bradley. But after a series of misbegotten boasts, insider complaints and anemic poll numbers, Gore and his handlers are hoping to focus their campaign in two ways: by proposing some “big” ideas that demonstrate Gore can be bold, and by portraying him as a solid, decent and dependable family man who will erase the Oval Office character deficit while keeping the economy on course. “Gore’s a great guy, and he’ll win if we can show that,” says media adviser Bill Knapp.
It’s a political paradox of the post-Clinton era that private lives of public figures simultaneously matter less–and more–than ever. The public is weary of sex talk. And yet, in the 2000 campaign, professions of marital fidelity are in vogue. On the Republican side, candidates such as Bush, Dan Quayle and Gary Bauer didn’t wait to be asked the “Big A” question before answering “no.” Gore’s friends make a different claim on his behalf, at once more subtle and sweeping. His strength and concern during the family’s crisis, loyalists say, is emblematic of the kind of man he is–and would be as president: he’s not just been faithful but devoted.
Gore probably has no choice but to play it as it lays in the Age of Oprah. But it’s a risky game plan, on two levels. As Gore himself acknowledges, he’s as stiff as they come on the public stage, usually too wooden or programmed (or both) to be convincing. He’s also been accused of using stories of his own family life–the death of his sister from lung cancer, his son’s auto accident–to supply some drama in speeches at the Democratic conventions of 1992 and 1996. Voters are wary. In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, they were closely divided about whether Tipper Gore had disclosed her mental illness for educational (40 percent) or political (36 percent) reasons.
Still, the Gore campaign needs to take some risks for the sake of generating momentum. In the NEWSWEEK Poll he leads Bradley in the Democratic race, but Gore’s support remains under 50 percent–the equivalent of a dangerously weak “re-elect” number for an incumbent. Bush bests him in the latest sampling 51 to 42 percent. More specific numbers are even more damning. Only 19 percent of those polled trust Gore “a lot” to handle foreign policy. That’s an ominous sign for a man who might be running next year on (or away from) the administration’s record in Kosovo. Asked whether Bush had “strong leadership qualities,” 71 percent replied “yes.” Only 44 percent said “yes” when asked about Gore. “I don’t think that the American people really know the candidates,” Gore said, shrugging. But don’t they know him? “Not as a candidate for president in my own right,” he said.
A sense of urgency finally arrived at the Gore residence on Massachusetts Avenue about two weeks ago. Prodded by Bradley’s progress (in the press if not with the public), Gore decided to speed up the pace and tighten the organization of his campaign. Without consulting any aides or advisers, he secretly searched for a czar-style campaign chairman. Sources confirmed to NEWSWEEK that Gore had sounded out Commerce Secretary Bill Daley about the job, but the Chicagoan had declined. Then Gore called Tony Coelho, an investment banker and former congressman from California. They had known each other since they served in the House in the ’70s, though they weren’t close friends.
At first Coelho declined, too. But when he read Tipper’s disclosure on depression, he changed his mind. For one thing, he was personally sympathetic. As an epileptic, Coelho admired her willingness to discuss her condition. He was also impressed by what he saw as the Gores’ bravery in laying bare a disquieting story. “If they were willing to show that much guts, who was I to say ’no’ when they asked me to help?” Coelho told NEWSWEEK. After meeting secretly with Gore, Coelho came back to the residence two days later to sit down with both him and Tipper.
Coelho is a warmhearted elbow-grabber widely liked in Washington, but his appointment nevertheless has the potential to be problematic. For one, it shocked and angered many turf-conscious Gore staffers. Aboard the vice president’s campaign plane last week, for example, the mention of Coelho’s name drew blank–or baleful–glances from aides loyal to chief of staff Ronald Klain. And it was Klain whom Coelho publicly blamed for Clinton’s spindoctoring, since Klain had been present when the president decided to make the call–and hadn’t warned Gore. Such staff friction is the most inside of inside baseball. But it’s endemic to an insider’s campaign like Gore’s, and potentially crippling if a war of anonymous quotes breaks out in the papers. “I’ll bet you right now that there’s a shake-up in that campaign by the fall,” said a prominent Democratic media consultant.
More important, Coelho himself is an insider’s insider, who left the Hill a decade ago rather than face an ethics inquiry over a bank loan he’d gotten from a beleaguered savings and loan. A Justice Department probe resulted in a clean bill, but Coelho is still best remembered in Washington for his role in assembling a very state-of-the-art Democratic money-raising machine in the ’80s. That makes him an odd choice for a candidate whose worst moments as veep have come in answer to questions about fund-raising. For the last 10 years Coelho has lived in midtown Manhattan, piling up money as an investment banker. Republicans–if not the Bradley campaign–are sure to probe his lucrative business career.
Still, Coelho knows how to make sure things get done, and he began doing so once he settled down into his commander’s chair. Bradley’s forces had been planning a sneak attack on the Democrats’ first straw poll, at the Massachusetts state convention last weekend in Springfield. By late last week the Gore team realized that they dare not risk losing that vote. They quickly ginned together a list of endorsements from Democratic mayors in the state. They papered the hall with buttons and signs. Top organizer Mike Whouley, a Boston-based consultant with deep ties in the state party, flew to Springfield.
As the ranking organizer in the Gore campaign–not to mention Massachusetts–Whouley was seeing his political career suddenly pass before his eyes, and he went into crisis mode. His work paid off. Bradley was supposed to show up to work the hall personally. But when his aides saw the Gore team’s firepower, they told their man to stay away–and Gore won 75 to 25 percent among committed delegates. In all, a silly game. But it was a nonstory that would have been a major one had Gore lost.
Other Gore aides, meanwhile, worked on a more serious matter: cranking out his first major policy proposal. It was to be unveiled last Sunday on Gore’s most important campaign swing thus far, a trip to Iowa in which he was to open his first state headquarters. In a commencement address there, the vice president was to propose a sweeping new guarantee of “universal lifetime education,” in which all Americans would be eligible for free schooling from prekindergarten through college. Gore labeled the idea “revolutionary.” The aim here was twofold: to offer something substantive and bold, but also to show that he wasn’t the cautious plodder most Americans think him to be.
As for Gore himself, he worked to get into fighting trim. A dedicated and disciplined jogger, he’s picked up the pace in recent months, and has shed the jowl and waistline tire that had formed after six years as vice president. Thinner, his features more hawklike, he sat in his library last Saturday with the wary awareness of a bird of prey, steeled in his summer suit for the rigors of the hunt for power.
History, Gore well knows, is against him. Insiders win in Congress all the time, but rarely do they win the White House. And Gore is a Washington insider many times over, no matter how much he protests that he was reared–at least in part–on his daddy’s farm in Tennessee. He grew up in an apartment on Massachusetts Avenue, attended a prep school on the same street, and now lives in a grand home three blocks away from the school. His campaign is staffed, and now run, by an array of experienced insiders, most of whom have spent their careers accumulating power in Washington. Gore faces a double-whammy: the vice presidency and a Washington base. George H. W. Bush was the first sitting vice president in 148 years to win the presidency. The Democrats’ only successful candidates since 1968 have been two Southern governors–Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton–who could claim to have the mud of the provinces on their new dress shoes.
Even so, Gore seems earnest and purposeful, if not buoyant. He is the wonk who listens, a role he enjoys, and one he learned by heart when he went down to Tennessee to get himself elected. “You know I used to have lots and lots of town-hall meetings,” he said. “Open meetings, I called them, all across Tennessee. And now we are getting into the part of the campaign where I am in living rooms, and on farms, and in coffee shops. That’s the part I most enjoy, and I’m having a great time at that.” He can’t quite bring himself to say that it’s possible to grow up in Washington, to live most of your life there, and be a decent, down-to-earth person. But it must be so. After all, he met Tipper there, at a teenage dance (there’s a picture in the library), and they’ve been together ever since.
