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  Recent commentary from National Journal: Social Studies: Nice Process In Florida -- Too Bad About the Candidates, by Jonathan Rauch (December 13, 2000) The surprise has been how well most of the actors have behaved, and how many alarms have been false. Legal Affairs: No Exit -- How the Supreme Court Boxed Gore In, by Stuart Taylor Jr. (December 13, 2000) The D.C. Nine have sent a subtle, but fairly unambiguous, signal that Al Gore's hopes are doomed. Media: Beyond Argument, by William Powers (December 13, 2000) Give them some credit. Cable TV news operations are getting a whole lot better. Political Pulse: Time Is Running Out for Gore, by William Schneider (December 13, 2000) While Gore is arguing the facts, Bush is arguing the law. But Bush has the clock on his side. Legal Affairs: Bush vs. Gore -- A First Draft for the Justices to Consider, by Stuart Taylor Jr. (December 6, 2000) We're judges, not magicians, and so we are in no position to somehow anoint the legitimate president. Media: Tidal Wave? Don't Bet on It, by William Powers (December 6, 2000) Why the hot news of a liberal columnist declaring his independence from Al Gore cooled quickly. Political Pulse: Why Al's Losing the Spin War, by William Schneider (December 6, 2000) Many Americans regard the dispute over the presidential vote as a mere political spectacle. The Campaign: If Gore Loses, He Needs to Be More Than Magnanimous, by Carl M. Cannon (December 6, 2000) Should he fail, the Vice President needs to work to repair the breach this challenge has caused. More from National Journal. Discuss this article in the Politics & Society conference of Post & Riposte. |
 The Campaign:A Fond Look at the Nagging Riddle of Al Gore In the early 1980s, I came to Washington to cover the capital for a newspaper in my home state of California. Because that newspaper, the San Jose Mercury News, is in the heart of the Silicon Valley, I found myself gravitating to an ambitious young Congressman from Tennessee. He was a Democrat with an affinity for science and technology, who, in those days, used his full name, Albert Gore Jr. Gore was impressive, and not just to a young regional correspondent. He was handsome, smart, well-spoken, unfailingly polite, and accessible, maybe a bit too accessible to suit his older colleagues. But more than anything, he was knowledgeable about an array of issues my paper cared about: arms control, basic scientific research, environmental cleanup, and technology policy. Al Gore was a gold mine. Once, his office sent me a press release about something that was being called "the information superhighway." Nobody I knew had ever heard of such a thing, but it sounded big, so I asked Gore's press secretary for an interview. Soon, I was in the Longworth House Office Building talking to this most unusual of ex-newspapermen -- a politician who loved science. Back in the office, as I wrote a story destined to appear on the front page back home, it dawned on me that I didn't exactly understand what Gore was talking about. I called Gore back and asked him for an example of what this "superhighway" could do for people. "Oh, you need an anecdote," he said. "Well, yes, but what I really need is to understand what the hell I'm writing about," I answered. And so, Al Gore, future Vice President of the United States, explained that one day you would sit at your desk, turn on your computer, and access all the books and information in the Library of Congress -- with pictures, too. No, he didn't "take the initiative in creating" the Internet. But as far as I know, Gore was the first elected official in Washington who had ever heard of it. Not only that, but he looked into the future, saw what it held, and embraced it enthusiastically. He was an evangelist for this new technology -- and for the best of reasons: It could help human beings learn. In time, Gore became a U.S. Senator and soon after that -- too soon -- a presidential candidate. In 1987, my bureau chief asked me to organize a lunch for Gore that would be televised on C-SPAN. During that session, which was otherwise unmemorable, Gore characterized himself as "a raging moderate." Later, as I walked him to the elevator in the National Press Building, Gore asked, "Carl, how'd I do in there?" "Raging moderate?" I answered. "Geez, Senator. I always thought you were a cerebral liberal." As I found out later, "raging moderate" was a phrase used by another candidate, a Republican, who had run against Gore in Tennessee. The candidate was Victor Ashe, a centrist state senator whom Gore defeated in his 1984 Senate race. That's certainly a forgivable level of political appropriation: Long before George W. Bush used "compassionate conservative," the phrase was employed by Newt Gingrich, James R. Jones (an Oklahoma Democrat), and Orrin G. Hatch. It was while running for President for the first time that Gore exhibited the trait that bedeviled him through much of the 2000 race: his willingness to puff up his resume and exaggerate his own importance. Richard Ben Cramer, author of What It Takes, the highly acclaimed tome about the 1988 candidates, was so put off by this mannerism that he didn't include Gore as one of the subjects of his book. "He said there were thousands of people -- that was the honest-to-God number he used, thousands -- writing to him telling him he ought to be President," Cramer later explained to Gore biographer David Maraniss. "I sensed that probably didn't happen.... So I thought to myself, 'Life's too short to talk to this guy any more.' It wasn't the fact that he wasn't telling the truth; it was the pallid bankruptcy of the lies, all in the service of a picture of himself that wasn't even interesting. He wasn't even an interesting liar." Cramer's observation might seem prescient today, but even hindsight is no guarantee of 20/20 vision. Before Gore's association with Bill Clinton -- that is to say: before the Buddhist temple fund-raisers, before the $50,000 White House coffees, before the Lincoln Bedroom sleepovers, before Gore's "no controlling legal authority" explanation for prohibited fund-raising calls, before the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which was punctuated by Gore standing on the White House lawn on the day Clinton was impeached and intoning that history would place his boss in the pantheon of American Presidents -- before all that, Gore's occasional rhetorical flights of fancy were no worse than Ronald Reagan's. No, the striking thing about Al Gore back in the 1980s wasn't that he was an embellisher or that he didn't really know who he was. It was that he was such an unnatural politician. He knew who he was -- he just didn't seem comfortable doing what he was doing. He was just obviously so much more at ease delving into ideas, especially ideas relating to science, than he was interacting with strangers. I went to his office so many times that his press secretary and receptionist would greet me by name. At each visit, Gore would behave as though he was meeting me for the first time. He was, in this respect, at least, very nearly Bill Clinton's opposite. A year after Gore's first run for the presidency, I was in San Francisco for the World Series, but instead of enjoying a baseball vacation, I ended up covering the deadly Loma Prieta earthquake. And when I returned to Washington, my editors were interested in every aspect of the federal government's involvement in earthquake research, earthquake preparedness, and earthquake disaster relief. In time, I even came across voices in government warning about a seismic fault line in the eastern part of the United States, the New Madrid Fault, that was less active than the San Andreas Fault, but potentially even more deadly -- and the primary voice raised in concern belonged to Al Gore. So, once again, I found myself interviewing him, this time in his Senate office. Gore knew all about the obscure New Madrid Fault, including where it ran (for 120 miles along the Missouri bootheel, crisscrossing into five states), the last time it generated an earthquake (Oct. 31, 1895), and the kind of power it unleashed with its 1811 and 1812 temblors. Gore regaled me with stories of huge lakes being formed, of the Mississippi River flowing backwards, and of church bells pealing in Boston as a result of the quakes. And he provided me the name and phone number of the geologist who knew more about New Madrid than anybody in the world, Arch Johnston, a professor at Memphis State. I flew to Tennessee and interviewed Johnston, but there's only so much to say about an earthquake fault that has been inactive for 100 years. After a while, the talk turned to Gore, whom Johnston had tutored on New Madrid -- and whom Johnston liked very much. It was there, in Arch Johnston's office, that the nagging riddle of Al Gore started to make sense. This, I thought, is what Albert Gore Jr. would be doing if he hadn't been the only son of Albert Gore Sr. and Pauline Gore. He'd be a college professor -- in some scientific discipline. He'd be a bit aloof, but students would like him because Gore would know his subject backwards and forwards, and he'd be enthusiastic about imparting what he knew. He'd also have that great wife of his, and she'd tool around campus on her rollerblades, camera strapped to her neck. Gore would hold office hours early in the afternoon so he could get home to Tipper and the kids. I never thought about writing those impressions then -- too Gail Sheehy -- and, besides, Albert Gore Jr. is hardly the first son to be pushed, reluctantly, into the family business. Over time, however, my notion about Gore has been bolstered by none other than Bill Clinton, who has told friends he thinks Gore would have been more content as an academic. And as Election Hell 2000 enters its second month, the thought occurs that if Gore doesn't prevail in the Florida recount, it's not too late for him to be president and to settle into university life. I'm referring, of course, to the vacant presidency at Harvard, Gore's alma mater, which is currently searching for a new president. That suggestion has been made in recent days, usually by conservatives trying to will Gore out of politics. But even Gore aides have asked the Vice President about this possibility. This is a sweet idea. It might put Gore in the best environment for him. And he would shine. When he attended Harvard as a young man, Gore befriended people -- from actor Tommy Lee Jones to New Republic Publisher Martin Peretz -- who love him to this day. Yes, love him. What do you think? Discuss this article in the Politics & Society conference of Post & Riposte. More from National Journal. More on politics and society in Atlantic Unbound and The Atlantic Monthly. Carl M. Cannon is a correspondent for National Journal. This column appears every week in National Journal, a weekly magazine covering politics and government published in Washington, D.C. For information on National Journal Group publications, see NationalJournal.com. All material copyright © 2000 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved. | ||||||||||||
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