The Empire Strikes Back

It was about time Al Gore caught a break. For months his presidential campaign has seen nothing but bad luck and trouble, much of it brought on by the Vice President himself. He ignored his only Democratic rival until Bill Bradley's minivan pulled up right alongside Air Force Two. He turned his campaign into a jobs program for consultants and seemed congenitally unable to connect with voters. Things were so dismal for so long, in fact, that after Gore fired his pollster, slashed his staff, declared himself the underdog and moved his headquarters to Nashville, Tenn., it was probably inevitable that his luck would change, at least for a little while.

But let's not get carried away with comeback talk. Let's just say Gore finally had a good week.

If a high point came in Los Angeles on Wednesday, when Gore landed the endorsement of the 13 million-member AFL-CIO--a labor machine that can give his campaign soft money, vote-pulling muscle and 200 organizers in Iowa alone--it wasn't the only one. That night in Seattle, after the Senate shot down the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, Gore tried to build momentum by staying up late to write, edit and star in a TV spot in which he pledged that his first act as President would be to send the treaty back to the Senate. That may not get voters dancing in the streets of Nashua, N.H., but at least it proved he was capable of making a spontaneous move. "It was probably the least calculated moment of the campaign," says an adviser. Gore didn't even have time to poll, though he knew in his bones that the no-nukes message would play well among liberals leaning toward Bradley. Flying from Seattle to Washington on Thursday, Gore told reporters how he had written the spot on hotel stationery; he even handed out copies of a penciled-up draft. He was pleased to have done something brave and impulsive. On Friday he was still being that way. He told the Washington Post he was thinking about flying solo--asking Bill Clinton to stand aside and let him win or lose by himself.

Gore, who can seem phony even when he's totally sincere, has always tried to make up with hard work what he lacks in instinct and inspiration. Right now he's working so feverishly to connect that he makes you want to give him a hug. "I don't want to tell you what's on my mind," he says constantly. "I want to show you what's in my heart"--and you get the idea he'd like to rip the thing clean out of his breast, just to prove he has one. What's fascinating is that this all shows signs of working. He sometimes manages to find what performers call the Zone--the elusive place where everything they try works. In Seattle an audience of Boeing aerospace machinists went wild for Gore--repeat, went wild for Gore. People laughed at his jokes. They nodded at his confession that after Vietnam and Watergate, "I was as disillusioned as anyone you've ever met." They cheered when he promised he would "stay and fight" for them. And they were mindful that unlike Bradley, he supports building the F-22 Raptor jet fighter, a program that helps keep Boeing humming.

Though two of the AFL-CIO's biggest unions, the Teamsters and United Auto Workers, withheld their endorsements last week in hopes of extracting trade protections from the Clinton Administration, the good news for Gore is that he managed to reel in the AFL without making those kinds of concessions. In effect he pulled a Bradley, telling unions they should trust him because of what he is, not what he will do. He glossed over the knottiest issue facing labor: the way free trade exports American jobs and suppresses American wages. And though free traders have proposals for dealing with the problem, Gore didn't mention them. Apart from a promise to negotiate labor and environmental agreements as part of future trade pacts, not as side deals, he offered platitudes about protecting the right to organize and boosting the minimum wage--no-brainers for any Democrat. In fact, nothing Gore said in L.A. about how he'd "stay and fight for working people" would have raised an eyebrow the next day in Washington, when he told the free-trade-loving members of the Democratic Leadership Council that he would stay and fight for centrism. Gore has been doing plenty of staying and fighting this month. His new slogan, of course, is designed to contrast him with Bradley, who left the Senate during the Gingrich revolution. Gore's attacks on Bradley represent something he's long been missing: a coherent strategy, a chance to pull himself off the mat.

Gore first drew blood with "stay and fight" two weeks ago, when he and Bradley made a joint appearance in Iowa. Bradley spoke first, bemoaning the state of politics and wondering why he and Gore couldn't be more like home-run rivals Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, "pushing [each other] to be the best we could be." When it was Gore's turn he said, "I listened carefully to what you had to say about making this campaign a different kind of experience. I really agree." He proposed a debate a week, each devoted to a different issue. "What about it, Bill? If the answer is yes, stand up."