The Al And Dick Show

By all appearances, it was a relaxing evening, a cozy dinner for four. The hosts served filet of sole and good white wine. They gave the guests a tour of the house, a Victorian mansion on a hill, then sat them down in the living room, where they all swapped child-rearing stories and cooed over wedding albums.

But this was no ordinary dinner, no ordinary time. The date was Jan. 24, 1998, three days after an atom bomb named Monica was dropped on the capital. The hosts were Al and Tipper Gore; House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt and his wife Jane were their guests. Washington was radioactive--the press was on a round-the-clock Clinton death watch--and there was private tension as well. A month before, Gephardt had delivered a scathing speech at Harvard, attacking Democrats who practice "the politics of small ideas" and replace compassion with "momentary calculation." Everyone knew whom he was talking about--and now the subject of his speech had invited the Gephardts to dinner.

Gore and Gephardt had been rivals at least since their brutal sparring as also-rans in the 1988 presidential primaries and probably since the day in 1977 when they arrived in Congress as the smartest boys in a class in which all the members considered themselves most likely to succeed. Now, in challenging Gore for the 2000 nomination, Gephardt was prepared to wage nothing less than a struggle for their party's soul. All of which might have given the two plenty to talk about at dinner, except they didn't talk about any of it. Gore never brought up the Harvard speech, and no one mentioned the White House intern. The evening, Gephardt later remarked privately, "could not have been more surreal."

That's what he thought at the time. But a year later, Gore and Gephardt are on the verge of becoming the closest of allies, linking their destinies in a pact of mutually assured ambition. This week, as Gore's team quietly installs the phones and sets up desks in his new presidential-campaign headquarters, nine blocks from the White House, Gephardt is expected to make a splashy announcement about his own bid--for Speaker of the House. All indications are that having set aside the dream of becoming President, the 58-year-old Congressman from St. Louis, Mo., will announce his intention to stay put and pour his energies into winning the six seats needed to retake the House from the Republicans in 2000. Such is the transformational power of the Lewinsky scandal. Says a top presidential aide: "Republicans pushed Democrats into each other's arms, whether we liked it or not."

Gore has found the silver lining in Bill Clinton's scandal. Gephardt was the most threatening of half a dozen Democrats preparing to run against him, but the field has evaporated. Only Bill Bradley has announced; Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, another long shot, may join him. Other contenders--Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, Bob Kerrey of Nebraska--bowed out before getting in. Though each offers different reasons for not running, all fell victim to the same untamable force.

Call it the Monica effect. For a year, the Lewinsky imbroglio has frozen the Democratic Party in place, making it impossible for any would-be candidate to position himself for the presidential campaign. "You can't pursue your long-term goals," says a Gephardt associate, "when you're smack in the middle of a 24-hour-a-day effort to keep the President and the party from going down the toilet." Never was Gephardt needed so badly as on Clinton's worst day, when the House debated the articles of impeachment and the Democratic leader implored his colleagues to "step back from the abyss." Only five Democrats defected. Later, at the White House, Gore stood up to say what many lawmakers thought: "I don't believe I have heard a finer speech on the floor of the House."

By then, their rivalry was turning into a partnership. They followed up their January 1998 dinner with private lunches in the Vice President's office. The meetings were kept so far below radar that one day last summer, Clinton's chief of staff Erskine Bowles sent out an urgent page to the President's senior advisers: Why is Gephardt at the White House? Where their staffs once fed the rivalry, the principals have begun to rely upon--and even trust--some of the same allies, notably Democratic uber-fund raiser Terry McAuliffe and current White House chief of staff John Podesta. It helped their new rapport that both had so much to lose in last November's midterm election. In late August, Gephardt conspicuously declared his support for Gore against renewed questions involving the Vice President's 1996 fund-raising activities. At a joint campaign event in St. Louis last October, the two heaped praise on each other--and Gore's senior aides were so solicitous that they carried the luggage for Gephardt's top people.

It was hard to miss the significance of Gore's constant declarations on the stump: "No one wants Dick Gephardt to be Speaker more than I do." And no one--with the possible exception of Gephardt--had logged more miles, raised more money or delivered more speeches than Gore. Though Gore was never particularly popular with his colleagues when he served on Capitol Hill, he now enjoys a substantial reservoir of goodwill and gratitude. And for the first time, when Clinton saluted Gore's "visionary leadership" during last month's State of the Union speech, Democrats actually cheered.