The Al And Dick Show

(2 of 2)

Today Gore finds himself with an almost insurmountable lead at a time when being front runner is more important than ever. With California moving its primary to early March, New York expected to do the same, and a host of Southern and Western states scheduling theirs in the weeks that follow, both parties are likely to have chosen their nominees by mid-March. That means that by the Iowa caucuses in February, any credible candidate will probably need to be running field operations in 25 states and television ads in eight or 10.

Gore and Gephardt, of course, are not the only people with an interest in their mutual success. Bill and Hillary Clinton believe Gore's election is crucial to validating Clinton's presidency, especially if they also get the House back--thus undoing the humiliating G.O.P. sweep of 1994. Clinton, an adviser says, "wants to be Gore's campaign manager, and he may have to fight Hillary for the job."

Clinton's State of the Union speech was less a blueprint for governing than a manifesto for Gore 2000, laying out differences between the parties on education standards, health care, gun control and tobacco. If there was any doubt about the imprint that Clinton will have on Gore's candidacy, it was erased when the Vice President went outside his own inner circle in early December and picked as his campaign manager White House political director Craig Smith, whose work on Clinton's campaigns goes back to the mid-1980s.

Clinton's influence is showing elsewhere as well. A few months ago, the President privately complained to advisers that Gore had not yet found his own voice outside his trademark issues, technology and the environment. Gore is trying to expand his reach by delving into new areas such as education and health care--issues with which Clinton has so successfully connected with the public--and by repackaging the causes that have long been his passion. "You go to Al Gore's strengths and talk about them in a new way, a way that's much more about bread-and-butter concerns," says a Gore adviser.

Thus Gore's environmentalism and his urban policy come together as a concern for making sprawling suburbs more livable. Since the high-tech economy that has long fascinated him is an abstract and even scary concept to most Americans, especially those who fear it will leave them behind, he talks less about "digital earth" and more about technology's potential for assisting lifelong learning, a concept he promoted at a conference in New Hampshire last fall even before he held one at the White House in January.

Whether it's the anti-Republican backlash from the scandal or a new public appreciation for Gore, something has turned his poll numbers rosier. Last fall he was trailing G.O.P. leader George W. Bush by almost 20 points in some polls; currently most polls show the Vice President roughly even with the Texas Governor. It can only help that while Bush and other G.O.P. contenders will spend the next 13 months in a fierce battle over the direction of their party, Gore--thanks to Gephardt--seems headed for a less bruising struggle.

As with any other couple, it is certain the two will again have their fights. Beneath their Monica-forged unity lie unreconciled differences over key Democratic issues such as trade and welfare. But last week, as the economy posted the kind of heavenly numbers that can make their union endure, Gore and Gephardt and their wives were together again, this time in St. Louis to see off Pope John Paul II. It was almost a year to the day since their first communion at the Vice President's mansion. Sometimes it takes a difficult courtship to make a strong marriage.