He sings, he strains
CAMPAIGN DIARY BY STEVE LOPEZ
January 10, 2000
Web posted at: 11:07 a.m. EST (1607 GMT)
Because Vice President Al Gore is basically a decent and
well-intentioned man, you find yourself constantly wanting to
rush up to him on the presidential campaign trail and save him
from himself. He is a sharp guy, but he knows next to nothing
about the social contract between humans, probably because it is
not written down anywhere and cannot be downloaded into the Palm
V organizer he keeps strapped to his belt at all times.
Last week at Somersworth High School in New Hampshire, for
instance, some poor kid asked him a simple question about how to
develop leadership skills. Gore hurried over to the boy and stood
too close to him, looking every bit like that one guy you end up
trying to avoid at the party. And by the time he approached what
must have been Point 6B in a frightfully organized answer,
several students appeared comatose.
But perhaps a more striking example of his social disability is
the moment when Gore broke into song with Massachusetts Senator
Ted Kennedy, who had just endorsed him. In Gore's defense,
Kennedy kind of put him on the spot. After a meeting with senior
citizens at a housing complex in Portsmouth, N.H., Kennedy
spontaneously grabbed the housing director (also an Irishman) and
Gore and started in on When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.
It was almost as painful as when Mike Dukakis put on the helmet,
which fit him like a kettledrum, and climbed into the tank for a
photo op. Gore didn't know the words but tried to fake it, and
that was the least of his problems. You wanted to run up and tell
him: Don't pretend this is the least bit comfortable for you. It
only makes it worse.
In retrospect, it would have been smarter to have Kennedy mail in
his endorsement. A Kennedy fills a room, not just casting a
shadow but creating a total eclipse. At the Grover Cleveland
Middle School in Dorchester, Mass., Kennedy packed the hall with
labor leaders, party loyalists and other wildlife, then delivered
a fire-and-brimstone endorsement speech that brought them leaping
to their feet. Off his diet and about to bust every stitch of his
too small blue suit, he was a great, sweaty, painted pumpkin,
with a voice that raised the roof.
Then Gore took the microphone, which is like being the guy who
bats right after Mark McGwire. It would help if somebody would
grab that Palm V when Gore isn't looking and type in Social
Contract Rule No. 1: don't enunciate every syllable while
feigning an intimacy that doesn't exist because it looks as if
you think you're speaking to morons.
It's not that Gore doesn't have his moments. He had a roomful of
women swooning in downtown Des Moines, Iowa, with the moving
story of his mother's struggle to put herself through college. "I
wasn't sure about him before I came," said Merritta Florence, 68,
a schoolteacher for the past 45 years. "He's interested in the
same things I'm interested in, and I like his proposals on
education and health care especially. And I thought he was very
warm."
And Gore was quick on his feet at the Kennedy sing-along after
Chris Matthews, host of CNBC's Hardball, asked him why he keeps
caning Democratic opponent Bill Bradley like a redhaired
stepchild. In responding, Gore playfully kept plugging the name
of Matthews' show, to which Matthews replied, "I'm falling in
love with you."
"It can happen," Gore retorted, co-opting Bradley's campaign
slogan. Can it? Is it really possible to love a man who presses
his Dockers? Imagine candidate Bill Clinton fielding that
student's question about leadership. He'd have spun gold,
bringing that boy and the rest of the room in on the deal with a
simple, folksy story rather than a footnoted dissertation that
made you want to run from the building and stick your head in a
snowbank.
One night last week in Moline, Ill., the stairs of Air Force Two
literally froze to the ground. After Gore and some staff grabbed
a rope, tug-of-war style, and resolved the problem, the Vice
President came back to brag on it a little and feed the animals
in the press. He told a story about sneaking into a
Tennessee-Jacksonville NFL game incognito and one about himself
and his father stumbling onto a still in Tennessee once while
hunting. He is warmer and more likable in that mode, but there is
still a strain of earnest informality.
Kennedy's presence awakened the raspy-voiced twin who lives in
Gore's body and often rises up like the son of Frankenstein to
deliver punctuation. But by week's end, Gore was in quiet
retreat, putting out fires ignited by his comments on gays in the
military and his campaign manager's remarks about minorities in
the G.O.P. At a press conference, he brilliantly managed to make
it worse with a raft of doublespeak.
People love to ask who the real Al Gore is. But there is no great
mystery in him. He is a politician who wraps himself in whatever
he thinks will get him past the shadows of Clinton and his own
father, a Senator and citizen of great timber. He's a nice enough
fellow who wants to do good but needs a little too desperately to
do well.
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