Sure, one is mocked as “Prince Albert” and “Boy Gore,” and the other is only remembered for a terrible speech he gave at the 1988 Democratic Convention. But for a party desperate for someone to lead it out of the political wilderness, Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore and Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton look pretty good. Gore voted “right” on the gulf war, one of the few potential Democratic presidential contenders who did. Clinton, a five-term governor, knows how to make domestic issues sing. Best of all, they come from the right part of the country. The only Democrat in almost 30 years to break the GOP’s hammerlock on the South was native son Jimmy Carter. Until the Democrats nominate someone who can carry the South and at least part of the West, they can forget the presidency.
Gore and Clinton are driving home that point at this week’s gathering in Cleveland of the Democratic Leadership Council, a group of moderate Democrats determined to wrest power from the party’s Northeastern liberal wing. With Clinton as its chairman and Southerners making up most of its founding members, the DLC would like one of its own to head the ‘92 ticket. Gore is the obvious favorite: he ran in ‘88, and party optimists now look at his ragged performance as a good learning experience. He also has the advantage of having gone through the microscopic scrutiny of his private life that every presidential candidate must face. Clinton has pledged to Arkansas voters that he would not seek higher office, and has indicated to friends that he would defer to Gore. But Gore himself is described as “very ambivalent” about running. Their coyness prompted one disgusted strategist to compare the DLC convention to “a suburban high school sock hop … Everybody is tarted up and pretty, but nobody wants to make the first move.”
The Democratic field is unlikely to take shape before fall, but the inside jockeying is well underway’ Because he voted for the early use of force in the gulf, Gore is inoculated against the charge of weakness on defense that has plagued Democrats since George McGovern’s losing race in ‘72. While Clinton also favored force, he cannot point to a vote. For many Democrats, the notion of another unknown governor with no foreign-policy experience is “deja vu all over again,” says a Democratic consultant.
Clinton has an edge over Gore when it comes to domestic policy. An activist governor in his fifth term, Clinton has been on the cutting edge of reform for so long that Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn once introduced him as “a rising star in the Democratic Party for three decades.” Clinton has taken on the teachers’ unions; pushed school, health and welfare reforms; and this year won big business’s blessing for a targeted tax to pay for job training and vocational education. Gore focuses on such brie-and-wine crowd pleasers as global warming and the role of “information infrastructure” in competitiveness.
Stylistically, the two men are very different. Clinton bombed with his rambling speech at the ‘88 Democratic convention, but he is a gifted raconteur with an easy sassy style. “One on one, he’ll just charm the bejesus out of you-and not just women, men too,” says Carter Eskew, a Gore adviser. Gore tends to come across like an earnest high-school valedictorian. But being boring on the stump is not necessarily fatal. As Mary Matalin, chief of staff for the Republican National Committee, says, “Look what [GOP consultant Roger] Ailes works with!” Ailes coached George Bush in ‘88. Matalin dismisses Clinton (“What’s his base?”), but considers Gore a formidable opponent.
There is another Southerner to consider. Beneath his courtly patrician style, Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder is easily the steeliest of the three. Asked to comment on the drug and sex allegations swirling around Virginia Sen. Chuck Robb, Wilder offered no sympathy. “Most politicians are in the eye of the storm. Those of us who are there are able to handle it,” he told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. At 60, Wilder is a generation older than Gore and Clinton. He defies stereotypes, and could well be the favorite son to best carry the South and reclaim Democratic votes in the rest of the country. “We need somebody who is enough different so all those voters who have left will take another look,” says Elaine Kaymarck, a DLC policy analyst. A black governor who opposes tax increases and runs drug busts on college campuses has an audience in working-class America, white and black. Being born in the South may be an advantage in today’s electoral game. But like most things in life, it’s what you do with it that counts.
ALBERT GORE AGE: 43 EDUCATION: HARVARD, VANDERBILT LAW MILITARY SERVICE: SERVED IN VIETNAM AS AN ARMY NEWS REPORTER PET ISSUE: THE ENVIRONMENT STRONG POINT: VOTED FOR USE OF FORCE IN THE GULF WEAK POINT: DULL SPEAKER
BILL CLINTON AGE: 44 EDUCATION: GEORGETOWN, OXFORD, YALE LAW MILITARY SERVICE: NONE PET ISSUE: EDUCATION REFORM STRONG POINT: MODERATE IMAGE, EASY DEMEANOR WEAK POINT: NO FOREIGN-POLICY EXPERIENCE
