AlGore the Junior speaks on his signature campaign style:
They only need listen to the Vice President himself, as quoted in The Tennessean (July 19, 1991) on what it takes to run for President: "You're going to rip the lungs out of anybody else who's in the race, and you're going to do it right."
May 31, 2000
Team Gore
Somehow there was a lot of talk about unifying the Republican Party, and whether John McCain really meant it when he said, "I endorse him. I endorse him. I endorse him." Meanwhile, Bill Bradley still hasn't endorsed Al Gore, and the ongoing Democratic primary voting is anything but a show of unity.
Team captain
The other day in Arkansas, for example, Mr. Gore drew only 78% of the vote. Crackpot felon Lyndon LaRouche won 22%, presumably because the voters deliberately or mistakenly took him as "none of the above." Even after dropping out of the race, Mr. Bradley got 27% in Nebraska and 19% in North Carolina. Ralph Nader polls 5% nationally campaigning on the idea that after the Clinton-Gore era, taking a cold shower would be good for the long-run future of the Democratic Party. And since the end of March, George W. Bush has led in 28 of 29 national polls.
Perhaps one reason Democrats are hesitant about signing up for Team Gore is they understand what that means. They know who their teammates will be and what kind of campaign that spells. They only need listen to the Vice President himself, as quoted in The Tennessean (July 19, 1991) on what it takes to run for President: "You're going to rip the lungs out of anybody else who's in the race, and you're going to do it right." Mr. Bradley learned firsthand what this means, of course. And the Vice President has assembled a Murderer's Row of political toughs to do the same to George W. Bush between now and November.
The Gore campaign, to start with, is headed by Tony Coelho, whose chief qualification is that in 1989 he had to resign from Congress and his role as the third ranking Democrat in the House leadership when an undisclosed junk bond deal involving financier Michael Milken made headlines. Mr. Coelho also knew that his role as a chronic abuser of the House Bank and a prolific see-no-evil fund-raiser of dubious S&L money would soon become public.
Mr. Coelho spent the next decade in various high-flying business ventures, with occasional government appointments. One of them, as an extravagantly spendthrift U.S. ambassador to the 1998 World Expo in Portugal, became the center of a scathing State Department audit last year. Its findings are now the basis for a criminal investigation by the Justice Department. Associates of Mr. Coelho have been subpoenaed, questions have been raised about documents he ordered destroyed and a Justice official told Time magazine "it looks like there might be something there." The Securities and Exchange Commission is separately investigating for securities fraud two companies on whose boards Mr. Coelho served.
Vice President Gore insists he has full confidence in his campaign chief, but Newsweek has just reported that Mr. Coelho is ensuring that the Gore campaign will be functioning smoothly by the August Democratic convention "so he can walk away if he wants to -- or has to."
Should Mr. Coelho leave, his logical successor would be Donna Brazile, the flamboyant campaign manager. Ms. Brazile already made headlines this year by accusing Colin Powell and J.C. Watts of being racial pawns for a GOP that would "rather take pictures with black children than feed them." Similarly in 1988, Ms. Brazile accused George Bush of running a "little racist campaign" by using such code words as "liberal, ACLU and gun control." She later was forced to resign when she told reporters Mr. Bush should "fess up" to having an extramarital affair.
But when the Gore campaign really takes the gloves off, the TV punches will be delivered by campaign strategist Bob Shrum. In 1990, he produced ads for the Texas Democratic opponent of Ann Richards that accused her of smoking marijuana and suggested she may have used cocaine. In 1998, his ads attacking the civil rights record of Maryland GOP gubernatorial candidate Ellen Sauerbrey were repudiated by Democratic Mayor Kurt Schmoke of Baltimore: "I will not participate in a campaign to try to persuade people that she is a racist."
The direction of Mr. Shrum's ads may be discerned from the results that Democratic pollsters Geoff Garin and Celinda Lake generated recently for the feminist group Emily's List. It tested how much support George W. Bush lost when respondents were read such statements as:
"Bush refused to support a bill to crack down on hate crimes."
"Bush has one of the worst records on children's issues of any U.S. governor."
"He weakened clean air regulation in Texas, and by allowing high volume polluters to be exempt from federal clean air standards, nearly 230,000 children are exposed to . . . air pollution emitted by these polluters each year."
"After the school shootings in Littleton, Colorado, he still worked to make it easier to carry concealed weapons in most public places, including churches and recreation centers."
"Bush's proposal to eliminate the inheritance tax would only benefit the super-rich."
Mr. Garin explained "these are the terms in which Democrats are very likely to make the case" against Mr. Bush and represent what voters "might hear from Democrats over the course of a six-month campaign."
The Vice President's campaign strategy is clear, but there also appears to be a slice of the Democratic Party that doesn't want to sign up. Perhaps the "permanent campaign" of Clinton creation is getting a bit old with an already very old party. Al Gore may be a much straighter personality than Bill Clinton, but to judge by Team Gore, in eight years as Vice President he seems to have turned himself into Clinton without the charm.
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