"Win One for the Groper"
Carlson, Tucker
"Win One for the Groper"? Why Gore is right to be wary of Clinton's help. BY TUCKER CARLSON ASK A FEW prominent Democrats about the relationship between Al Gore and Bill Clinton and the word...
...He resents Clinton's secretive style...
...Any appearances Clinton makes on Gore's behalf are apt to be awkward...
...It would be effective...
...For months, Gore devoted a large portion of his stump speech to his biography...
...The cops blew past...
...And he dealt with it in an adult fashion...
...Ted Kennedy had the same problem when I worked for him," says a Democratic political operative...
...He still sounds that way...
...His feelings are hurt...
...Gore's advisers remember this...
...And how can Clinton narrow-cast on the campaign trail...
...asks Brian Lunde, a longtime Democratic consultant who has endorsed Bush...
...Clinton is a problem for Gore...
...He wants to win as his 'own man,'" says one Democratic strategist...
...They also have polling data and analysis of focus groups that indicate many voters, particularly moderate suburbanites, would be less likely to vote for Gore if Clinton were to stump for him...
...Instead, he prattled on about his years as reporter on a mediocre regional newspaper...
...He resents the Monica business...
...But that doesn't mean Gore ought to pretend they never worked together...
...This sounds like a pretty good idea...
...Go out and win one for the Groper...
...Even Clinton's friends aren't so sure this would work...
...He really resents Hillary...
...Latifah asked Gore if he had ever "worn leather pants...
...Except that it's not clear Clinton, for all his famed campaign savvy, would make a particularly effective consultant...
...Gore's message became: 'Let me talk to you about how I've decided I'm against adultery.'" The other problem with Gore's reluctance to talk about his role in the Clinton administration is that it leaves him little to talk about...
...In late October of that year, Clinton returned to the United States after several days in the Middle East...
...For some reason Gore rarely makes it...
...Just on the off chance that they were we cut through an alleyway...
...As the election looms closer, Gore talks about his Own Man-ness in more and more detail...
...I look back on those days and I feel like I'm very lucky to have survived...
...He resents Clinton's lack of respect for him and for the vice presidency...
...You'd assume that every Gore speech—whether about the economy or foreign policy or the space program—would revolve around a single talking point: "During the eight years I've been vice president, America has become far more prosperous than it was...
...There is, of course, a middle way...
...Last week, Gore gave an interview to Queen Latifah, a former rap singer who has gone into the talk show business...
...This is a simple argument...
...From the point of view of Gore's advisers, Clinton is intent on forcing himself on the campaign, whether it helps or not...
...Under some circumstances this would make sense...
...more harm than good," says a close Clinton ally...
...What would the theme of the trip be...
...Clinton partisans counter that Clinton's job is not to convince undecided voters, but to turn out the party's base, many of whom still admire the president...
...Gore can't stand to be reminded of Clinton, even when talking about Clintonism would help him...
...Which is the fundamental problem with having Clinton on your side during a close election: For all his talents, he remains an embarrassing figure...
...Not surprisingly, Gore was spooked by the tape, and stumbled badly in the second debate...
...Clinton might set out to reach only voters who already approve of him, but his presence inevitably would be noticed by voters who don't...
...But that doesn't mean that smart Democrats are taking Clinton's side in the spat...
...It is even, technically speaking, true...
...It was Clinton who, over the objections of advisers Bob Shrum and Paul Begala, insisted on delivering his disastrously belligerent August 17, 1998, speech to the nation during the Monica Lewinsky scandal...
...Apparently that didn't sit well with the local fuzz...
...The president feels rejected...
...The trip, which included the first visit in decades by an American president to Syria, was generally considered successful...
...Gore seems to have decided that instead of talking about his career as vice president, he will talk about his personal life—the experience of being "his own man...
...Gore is losing the presidential race, and Clinton doesn't understand why he hasn't been called in to bail him out...
...Officially, the White House dismisses talk of a psychodrama...
...The stories become less convincing the more detailed they get...
...Clinton's political judgment can be terrible...
...In election years, he'd tell our colleagues from the South, 'I'll campaign for or against you, whichever does more good.'" Kennedy, says his former employee, understood how voters perceived him...
...Clinton's approval ratings were up...
...Al Gore as Marlon Brando...
...They actually called reporters about it," growls someone who watched it happen...
...Clinton can't, or won't, do this...
...He spent the next week barnstorming the country...
...Gore lived to cruise the boulevard another day...
...Gore didn't play up the highlights of his eight years as vice president, his work shaping welfare reform, or fighting for NAFTA...
...This was a calculated attempt to "reintroduce" himself to voters...
...Clinton could stay home and help direct Gore's campaign privately...
...Sustained campaigning by Clinton could make a difference in a gubernatorial or Senate race...
...Clinton himself illustrated this in 1994...
...They're probably right...
...BY TUCKER CARLSON ASK A FEW prominent Democrats about the relationship between Al Gore and Bill Clinton and the word you're most likely to hear, probably more than once, is "psychodrama...
...Clinton appears to be under the impression that he could revive the Gore campaign simply by getting out on the road and making the case to the country that Al Gore will extend the glories of the past eight years...
...Gore watchers attribute this, too, to the psychodrama...
...Clinton isn't the first politician to find himself wildly popular with certain constituencies and despised by others...
...He wore it when he rode his motorcycle...
...Why not just win...
...More recently, it was Clinton who advised strategists in Nashville to make Gore watch the devastating Saturday Night Live parody of his performance in the first debate...
...But on background, virtually every Democratic strategist in Washington seems eager to point out that the "tormented," "touchy," "painful," "complicated" relationship between these two men has hurt Gore's election-year chances...
...When they're not on the ballot presidents generally do Tucker Carlsonn is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...But the person who Gore reintroduced wasn't very impressive...
...And boy, did he ride his motorcycle...
...The irony in all this, as a number of Democrats watching from the sidelines point out, is that in trying to run as his own man, Gore has often turned the conversation back to Clinton...
...Clinton, meanwhile, didn't always resent Gore, but he does now...
...Psychobabble," a spokesman declared the other day...
...One time in Boston, Gore said, he put three people on the back of it...
...But he did once have a leather vest...
...Except weirder...
...He'd be better off defending Clinton...
...Gore's announcement speech last June, for instance, was almost entirely overshadowed by Gore's own efforts to distance himself from Clinton's marital problems...
...He declared himself "very optimistic" about the midterm elections and eager to start campaigning for Democrats...
...No, Gore said...
...On the eighth day, the Republicans swept both houses of Congress...
...By the time he landed at Andrews Air Force Base, Clinton, looking like a statesman, was in an expansive mood...
...He sounded phonier than ever...
...But his relationship to Gore, his own vice president, makes the present situation different...
...According to those who know him, Gore has come to resent a lot of things about Clinton...
...There was a blue light, and I can't say for sure that they were coming after us...
Vol. 6 • November 2000 • No. 8
