Why Gore Should Embrace Clinton

What a dilemma for Al Gore. He should be well ahead of George W. Bush by now. He should be on cruise control, barreling down the interstate toward an electoral inevitability. He should have won all three debates by knockout or unanimous decision, exercising his famous command of fact and argument. He should be the unarguable favorite in this race--the Expected One. Instead ...

And so the dilemma on which Gore chews--over which, I suspect, he gnashes his teeth--is this: whether to go to the Oval Office and say, "Mr. President, I need help. Unless you come out and start campaigning for me--now!--I am going to lose this election. And if I lose, there goes the vindication of the Clinton years. There goes the legacy."

Gore doesn't want to do it. His face darkens at the thought. The subject of Clinton came up in an interview on Regis Philbin's show last week, and Gore waved it away. Running for President, he said, "is something you really have to do on your own." Gore rarely mentions the President when campaigning. When Gore returned to the White House the other day for briefings on the Middle East, it was the first time he had been in the building since May 22. Clinton, hurt and puzzled, by all reports, sits and waits for Gore's call. The President brims with ideas, and with professional frustration at the sight of Gore fouling up an exercise that to Clinton is effortless second nature.

How humiliating for the former cigar-store Indian. Gore told the convention, "I stand here as my own man." He turned himself into an explosion of manic animation--pinwheeling and high-fiving across the American landscape, caring and sharing like nobody's business, the alpha male of millennial dream, his face a kaleidoscope of exuberance. And it hasn't worked. After all that profligate expenditure of self, he remains locked in a too-close-to-call race against a nice enough fellow from Texas and Yale whose mind, even in the midst of a presidential debate, seems to behave like a marathon runner at the 24-mile mark--struggling, panting for coherence.

What should Gore do? There must be fierce injured pride at work in his calculations--that, and a sensible fear that bringing Clinton in would stir up the old muck. Gore was more profoundly offended by the Lewinsky business than anyone would have thought that day in December 1998 when, at the defiant Rose Garden rally, he succumbed to his exaggeration addiction once again and declared Clinton to be one of the greatest American Presidents.

Gore is the Salieri of American politics. He wants so desperately to be a genius. He has mastered the techniques. He knows everything. And yet the spark of genius is not in him. And there in the Oval Office sits the Mozart from Arkansas, the natural, the casually smutty debaucher of interns who is also the political genius of our time. So, the dilemma: Does Salieri, seeing that he is losing the audience, invite Mozart to join the tour? My answer, if I were Gore's manager, would be yes. Absolutely. Immediately. I would tell Gore, What is humiliation, next to winning? The only humiliation is losing. In this case, the humiliation is only in your mind anyway, and in the spin of things. Mobilizing Clinton need not be an affront to your own gifts. Turn it into a positive. You have worked with him for eight years--been a crucial part of a successful Administration. Play to the theme of continuation, play to the successes.

Americans have demonstrated an interesting maturity (or a disgusting moral slackness, depending on your point of view) in their willingness to separate Clinton's squalid personal behavior from his official stewardship. Right now, their biggest fear is that the Clinton years are going to go away; they suffer from abandonment anxiety.

Therefore: Brag on the Clinton years! Promise more of the same! Bring Clinton out to brag on you! He's a narcissist, to be sure, but the smartest one in America. He knows what has to be done. Gore may need more than the deal he's already worked out, whereby the President plans to move around the country raising money and encouraging a large Democratic turnout; it seems that he will not campaign at Gore's side.

Salieri's music isn't worth a damn except to the extent that it sounds like Mozart's. So bring out Mozart, and have him play. And while that music lingers in the ear, have him promise the American audience that your music will be just as wonderful. They might half-believe it.

Americans had better be hearing that music in their minds when they go to the polls. Otherwise, you are headed for that desolate zone of historical nonexistence that is inhabited by former Vice Presidents.