If Clinton is worried, so is his putative heir to the White House, Al Gore. As the financial contagion persists, it’s becoming clear that the worst problem the vice president faces in election year 2000 may not be the backwash of White House scandals. It could well be that the U.S. economy goes into a deep freeze just as Gore’s campaign is heating up. When voters enter the booth, as George Bush learned sadly in 1992, questions about character and integrity tend to fade behind one concern: what happened to our purchasing power in the last four years? ““The two most important people to Al Gore’s future right now are Bob Rubin and Alan Greenspan,’’ says a top Democratic strategist. ““There’s little else to show for this administration at this point but the economy. The public doesn’t think of V-chips and school uniforms, they think of how much money they have for retirement.’’ And the famously wooden Gore–who once proposed a $100 million Marshall Plan, but to save the environment–is not exactly the kind of empathetic fellow they might want around to feel their pain.
Especially since Gore is, by most accounts, a true believer in Clintonomics. ““They’re pretty much cut out of the same cloth,’’ says Gene Sperling, Clinton’s chief economic adviser. ““He’s very engaged.’’ Both Clinton and Gore swear by global economic integration, as well as their ““New Democrat’’ blend of fiscal conservatism and educational reform. In policy discussions, the vice president is said to be even more of a hard-liner than Treasury Secretary Rubin on pushing Japan to reform its economy. Gore’s carefully cultivated image as an active, insider veep–““the president’s partner,’’ as ex-White House flack Mike McCurry once said–could work against him if the meltdown in global markets sinks the U.S. economy. Primary voters may well look to moderate neoprotectionists like Dick Gephardt.
Gore-ites try to put a positive spin on matters. ““No one likes to be running for office in economic bad times,’’ concedes Elaine Kamarck, a former top aide to the vice president. ““On the other hand, we’re in relatively uncharted territory with this crisis. Most of the country seems to understand that. When it comes to uncharted territory people look for stability, they look for expertise and they look for competence.’’ Unless, of course, they’re too busy looking for someone to blame.
