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Gore's strategy is a risky one. He may have to write off the Iowa caucuses. Not only was he late in entering, but he has done little catering to the liberal activists whose zeal dominates the delegate-selection process. He may fare better in New Hampshire, where the party is more diverse and the stalwarts tend to be more conservative than in Iowa. He counts on a big win March 8, Super Tuesday, when 20 states, mostly in the South, will hold primaries and caucuses to choose 35% of the delegates. In doing so, Gore is gambling that he will not get left in the dust as the winners in Iowa and New Hampshire gain momentum.
The other risk is more personal. Gore's thoughtful positions have an intellectual appeal to party moderates, and he has impressed Washington insiders with his articulate understanding of both the issues and the system. But he must still prove that he has the grit and the common touch needed to inspire a wider appeal. He often appears to be compensating for his fresh- faced youthfulness with a formality bordering on stiffness and a cocky & earnestness that sometimes seems like noblesse oblige. In his living room there is a framed cover of Memphis magazine with his photograph and the headline BORN TO RUN. A number of Gore's Senate colleagues have had trouble disguising their annoyance, perhaps tinged with jealousy. "That young know- it-all takes some gettin' used to," rasped South Carolina Democrat Ernest Hollings to another Senator. "He hasn't paid his dues."
Gore tries to strike a bond with ordinary voters by proclaiming himself the "only farmer in the race." He tells stories about raising Angus cattle since he was six on his father's 250-acre farm in Carthage, Tenn.; he showed one of his heifers and won a blue ribbon at the Iowa State Fair. But he quickly adds that anyone who shakes hands with him will notice the absence of calluses: "I haven't been spending much time on tractors of late."
Or ever. Gore was born in Washington and spent much of his childhood on Embassy Row in the Fairfax Hotel, where his parents had an apartment. He fondly remembers climbing onto the roof and hurling water balloons down on the cars on Massachusetts Avenue. He was an honor student and captain of the football team at the patrician St. Alban's School. He met Tipper (a childhood nickname; her real name is Mary Elizabeth) at his St. Alban's graduation party. John Davis, who taught Gore church history, remembers him as the straightest arrow in the quiver, someone whose only evident vice was an excess of virtue: "Everybody would think, 'This can't be real!' "
At Harvard in the late '60s, Gore demonstrated against the Viet Nam War and attended Eugene McCarthy rallies. After graduating, he considered resisting the draft. His parents were supportive. "If you want to go to Canada, I'll go with you," his mother said. The dilemma was all the more acute, for Gore did not want to hurt his father's 1970 re-election fight against Republican Bill Brock, currently Secretary of Labor. In the end, he enlisted as an Army reporter, and his father went down in defeat. "The combination of Viet Nam and his dad's losing really turned Al off politics," says his mother. Returning home in 1971, he became a reporter and editorial writer for the Nashville Tennessean. While working as a journalist, he enrolled at Vanderbilt, first as a theology student and then in law school.