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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mph who wrote (2024)	12/9/2003 8:58:57 AM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 90947

Mr. Inside Embraces Mr. Outside, and What a Surprise By TODD S. PURDUM Published: December 9, 2003 ASHINGTON, Dec. 8 — In moving to endorse Howard Dean, Al Gore embraced an insurgent candidate who has spent months railing against the brand of centrist-at-home, hawkish-abroad Democratic politics that Mr. Gore worked 20 years to help build. And in winning the endorsement, Dr. Dean has shown that he is now much more concerned about wooing the Washington establishment than whacking it. Politics makes strange bedfellows? You bet. In pledging allegiance to Dr. Dean, Mr. Gore passed over Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, the man he chose three years ago as his own running mate; Gen. Wesley K. Clark, for whom several of his former aides are working; Representative Richard A. Gephardt, a onetime rival who warmly endorsed him four years ago; and Senator John Kerry, a former colleague who declined to challenge him for the nomination in 2000. It was a move of striking — and discretionary — boldness that would have been all but unheard of for the cautious, calculating candidate Mr. Gore once was. At a time when a new generation of Democrats, like Hillary Rodham Clinton, are in the spotlight, this dramatic announcement puts Mr. Gore, at least briefly, back at the center of the public stage he left last year. By accepting Mr. Gore's support, Dr. Dean clearly hopes to ease the fears of Democratic office-holders who worry that he cannot beat President Bush. Mr. Gore remains popular in Iowa, whose crucial early caucuses Dr. Dean is hoping to win, as well as with black voters in the South and throughout the nation whose support Dr. Dean would badly need in a general election. The location of the endorsement announcement, scheduled for Harlem and Iowa, drove home that point. But even as he stands to gain, Dr. Dean may also alienate some of the grass roots supporters who have flocked to his crusade, disaffected by politics as usual and disappointed by Mr. Gore's losing campaign in 2000. The move carries obvious potential rewards, but equally obvious risks, for both men. The sudden marriage of such a seeming odd couple could wind up being seen as so politically expedient as to seem almost unprincipled, playing into the public's worst perceptions that campaigns are about power and winning, not big ideas. Before the 2000 election, when Mr. Gore was vice president, he was concerned enough that a largely unknown governor from Vermont named Howard Dean might challenge him for the nomination that he took the trouble of warning Mr. Dean not to run. When Terry McAuliffe, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, devised this cycle's front-loaded primary schedule, he too hoped that it would help deter challengers and lead the party to rally early around a consensus candidate — perhaps even Mr. Gore himself. It did not work out that way, of course. Mr. Gore chose not to be a contender. Now the man who would have been king may settle for being a kingmaker after all.