How Gore's campaign went off the railsBy Karen Tumulty and Michael Duffy
September 27, 1999
Web posted at: 12:30 p.m. EDT (1630 GMT)
How's Al Gore feeling these days? Never better, if you ask
anyone inside his campaign--pumped, working without notes, even
taking his jacket off. And those polls, the ones showing the Vice
President suddenly running slightly behind Bill Bradley in New
Hampshire and in a dead heat with him in New York, or suggesting
Bradley is the better at beating George W. Bush? Not to worry. As
the glum figures rolled in earlier this month, Gore told a top
adviser, "I'm connecting. I feel it. We just gotta keep doing
what we're doing."
To many anxious Democrats, it seems the only people Gore is
connecting with these days are TV gag writers. It isn't just that
Gore is running an old-fashioned, adviser-laden operation that is
high on endorsements but low on energy; it is that he has
squandered formidable leads in two categories that matter: money
and sheer inevitability. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan endorsed
Bradley last week, the New York Senator said publicly what many
in the party have been whispering about Gore: "He can't be
elected President."
Moynihan is one of only a handful of Capitol Hill Democrats
putting their names behind Bradley, while Gore's campaign
announces new lists of endorsements almost daily. But when it
comes to placing their own futures on the line, other Democrats
are hedging their bets. Even as House minority leader Dick
Gephardt works hard to shore up Gore support among labor and in
Iowa, he will not do anything to imperil his chances of taking
back the House--which is why he is not squeezing hard on wavering
members. "You've got to do what you need to get re-elected," the
leader told one. "That's what I want the most." And Gephardt is
working on a strategy in which his own goal is not tied to the
outcome of the presidential campaign--putting money and muscle in
close races where coattails won't save the Democrat.
Inside the Gore camp, things are increasingly fractious. In one
particularly nasty meeting recently, campaign chairman Tony
Coelho lashed out at his senior staff, and there are once again
hints that firings are in the offing. Gore's team redoubled its
efforts, cramming September with back-to-back fund raisers, but
it has not dispelled rumors that third-quarter reports could show
the campaign with less cash in the bank than Bradley has.
Gore operatives argue, rightly, that it is far better to face the
Bradley Moment in late September than in late January. Sources
tell TIME they are moving onto a war footing. Last week the
campaign stepped up its plan for "engaging" Bradley, distributing
talking points to Gore troops in New England. Gore officials say
Bradley is already offering a variety of targets, including an
embrace of gay rights that could backfire on that community, his
vote for a school-voucher experiment and what they say is his
mixed record on campaign-finance reform. More jabs are sure to
come.
What they need now is a seawall, one that would prevent Bradley's
support from washing beyond where it is strongest at the moment:
a hard core of affluent liberal men from the Northeast, according
to the TIME/CNN poll. The poll shows that Bradley is weakest
among Democrats with a high school degree or less (26% to Gore's
58%), who make less than $35,000 annually (26% to 51%), are union
members (27% to 63%) and who live in the South and West. "It's
very elite," says a Gore adviser of Bradley's core group. "In the
South, Midwest and everywhere else but California, that's not who
the Democratic primary voter is."
Maybe not, but last week several Gore officials were worried
enough to talk privately of perhaps losing New Hampshire--a
stunning concession at this stage--and maybe even New York. All of
which leaves them counting on the back pages of the
primary-season calendar. That is a far different scenario than
the quick blowout they expected earlier this year when they
decided not to take on Bradley at all because several key
players, including Gore, thought he might drop out.
That was not the only miscalculation by a candidate who cites
chaos theory as a favorite scientific principle. Gore spent the
first six months of 1999 surrounded by a virtual asteroid belt of
orbiting pollsters, message advisers, family retainers, backseat
drivers and policy hangers-on. All wanted a say in campaign
strategy, but few were committed enough to give up their day
jobs--many of which involved deep, complicated ties to other
politicians and corporate interests. Amid all this advice, the
one tip Gore might have done well to take came early on from Bill
Clinton, who told others that Gore should have moved his campaign
operation back to Tennessee. Instead, Gore set up shop blocks
from the White House on K Street--a concrete-and-glass canyon that
is to lobbyists what Wall Street is to stock traders.
While a bloated, imperial operation could hardly be expected to
pick up on warning signs, Gore insiders particularly fault Mark
Penn, the lead among Gore's half a dozen pollsters. Penn shares
his energies with the President, Hillary Clinton and Microsoft
chairman Bill Gates. Over and over, Penn told the Vice President
that Bradley posed little or no threat, that Bush was not as far
ahead as public polls suggested and that most voters were
confusing the Texas Governor with his father. At one point, when
Penn was insisting that Gore was no farther than 10 points behind
Bush, a campaign official quietly asked another pollster to check
Penn's work. The number came back: Gore down by 18. Penn declined
to be interviewed but let it be known through an intermediary
that his position is secure.
The job of mopping up the mess that Gore made of his own campaign
fell to Coelho, a party operative recruited in May. He has seized
control of Gore's schedule and made sure that no one but he and
message guru Carter Eskew have day-to-day access to the
candidate. So determined is Gore to divorce himself from the
details that when his wife Tipper recently raised a question
about the campaign, Gore answered, only partly joking, "Have you
talked to Tony?"
The even harder task may be Eskew's. Hired by Coelho to fix the
message, he faces the challenge of convincing voters tired of
Clinton that a Gore presidency would amount to something more
than Clinton's third term. Gore has spent most of the year laying
out proposals that are both bold and unconventional, but they
have been smothered in windy speeches and 20-point plans. The
tactic was one that Penn used to great effect in Clinton's 1996
campaign: polling a raft of proposals, then tying together the
ones that tested safely above 80% approval. The approach worked
for Clinton, but it seemed to diminish Gore, who had come to the
Clinton Administration with a reputation as a visionary. "The
biggest single strategic mistake we have made is putting him out
there early with all these ideas," says a Gore adviser. "Almost
nobody was listening. They want to know who he is."
So once more, Gore is starting over. Working the final draft of
his health-care plan, Gore rejected eight of the 13 options laid
before him and made a headline-grabbing promise in early
September to ensure that every child in America has health
insurance by the end of his first term. "This is the kind of
change people want!" he told his aides. But in a campaign that
has already seen several new starts, Gore seems to realize that
this may be his last chance. "It's really a race," he told a
friend last week. "Now we've got to go in and win."
--With
reporting by John F. Dickerson/ Washington
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Cover Date: October 4, 1999
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