Gore Gets off the Hook

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WASHINGTON: Don't bother to ask Al Gore what he's going to do now that Janet Reno has let him off the hook. The answer is campaign, campaign, campaign. "He's all over the map this week," says TIME White House Correspondent Karen Tumulty. "He's got a mission now: to get back on his signature issues and try to bury the ethical questions under a pile of positives."

Tuesday that meant a stop at the cybersmut conference; Wednesday he led a phalanx of Hollywood types into the Roosevelt room to urge the entertainment industry to stop making smoking look so cool.

On Saturday Gore will be in the Everglades talking about the environment, and then it's off to Kyoto for some well-publicized arm-twisting at the global warming conference. "Gore will be in Kyoto only eight hours," says Tumulty, "which is a long way for a short drink of water."

But as President Clinton well knows, the stage's the thing: when you're already in the White House, enough drinks of water like that can get your lease renewed.