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Uneasy about Gore's reentry

By Joan Vennochi, Globe Staff, 9/7/2001

RANKLY, I prefer men - and presidential candidates - with hair on their heads, not on their faces. But facial fuzz is not what makes me queasy about Al Gore's reemergence on the national political scene. It's the idea that donors and, ultimately, voters owe him a rematch against George W. Bush, the man who beat him.

As The New York Times recently reported, Gore is reaching out to the Democratic Party's most generous donors as part of a ''carefully choreographed return to the political arena.'' By soliciting checks of $5,000 for a Gore political action committee, the effort raised more than $100,000, but, ''It was much harder than it should have been,'' a fund-raiser complained to the Times.

Once he is officially back on the presidential campaign trail, Gore will no doubt pick up where he left off when it comes to mouthing essentially empty rhetoric about campaign finance reform. But for now, he and the advisers who are planning his comeback are offended that people are not pouring money into his pockets quickly enough. Why should they?

In 2000, Gore had tons of money, economic prosperity, and incumbency, and he lost the election and his home state of Tennessee. In 2004, he will obviously need something else. Sincerity, humility, and real political convictions, not poll-driven platitudes and strategy, would be a place to start. In the meantime, I do have some sympathy - maybe it is pity - for men like Gore who yearn for political redemption.

They spend much of their adult life stalking a path they believe will take them to a certain place. Behind them trail supporters who are betting on them, the same way gamblers bet on a horse. If the path ends in abrupt defeat, the horse and the gamblers look only to each other for direction. Left to his own devices, and other points of view, the horse might actually start thinking about other, more pleasant pastures.

But the hard-core gamblers around him don't want their horse to gallop away with his dreams and theirs. So, they sweet-talk him back into the race, telling him victory was stolen from him, and then scramble to devise a strategy that will make him a winner.

While I have not seen it, I guarantee that the former vice president has in his possession a document that spells out a detailed and specific strategy to bring about a Bush-Gore rematch. It sketches out the burned bridges he must rebuild, the coalitions he must recreate, and the new Gore he must turn into. The self-deprecating jokes he is already making about his transition from public to private life are part of the game plan. ''They let other cars on the road when I drive; that takes considerably more time,'' he joshed while campaigning last week on behalf of the mayor of Minneapolis.

Such a strategy is not evil, but it is misguided, if all it amounts to is a calculated but essentially empty formula for political success. A candidate may follow such a script and, up to a point, win. But at some moment in time, the script runs thin, revealing the hollow man or woman who is mouthing someone else's words. Bush is already showing the wear and tear of that phenomenon.

After losing to John F. Kennedy in 1960, the new Richard Nixon won the presidency in 1968. But he could not escape the old and real Richard M. Nixon, as revealed by Watergate. The new Michael S. Dukakis rallied to beat Ed King and regain the governorship of Massachusetts in 1982. Following a carefully calculated strategy, Dukakis edged onto the national stage and in 1988 won the Democratic presidential nomination. But strategy alone could not turn a stick figure into a human being the voters wanted as their president. (For better or worse, Bill Clinton was always human and therein lies his connection to voters who loved or despised him.)

Gore has every right to believe he can run again for president. No doubt he looks at the field of Democrats already vying for the prize and thinks it weak. The Bush administration's need to confront the disappearing surplus and juggle conflicting commitments to education and defense illustrate vulnerabilities down the road for the incumbent president and opportunities for the Democrats.

Pinning a run on a strategic concept like a rematch is fine up to a point. But it takes more than a beard and a script to turn Gore into the candidate who can win in 2004. The money should not flow until he shows he knows what that is.

-- Anonymous, September 07, 2001