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The lunches remain the only inviolable part of either Clinton's or Gore's schedule because Bold Al turned out to be a saving influence on Clinton's first term. During the North American Free Trade Agreement battles of 1993, he insisted on debating Ross Perot against the wishes of White House staff--and outsimplified the Texan at his own game. Together with Morris, Bold Al helped turn around the rudderless Clinton presidency after the midterm-election debacle of 1994, urging Clinton to embrace the balanced budget in June 1995 when most other White House advisers were against it; arguing in August 1995 that it was high time to bomb the Bosnian Serbs into submission; and counseling Clinton during the winter's titanic showdown with the g.o.p. not to compromise but to let the Republicans shutter the government and take the blame. Sometimes Bold Al gets carried away. In December 1995 he infuriated Republicans by phoning the nbc Nightly News to announce a massive telecommunications reform bill in order to guarantee that the White House got credit for it, in the process nearly blowing up the fragile compromise just reached. The same tactic almost wrecked the delicate negotiations over television ratings last June.
But more recently Bold Al has phoned in sick. Last fall, as union-backed House Democrats were working to kill a bill that would have given the President "fast track" authority to negotiate trade agreements without congressional approval, Gore tried to talk Clinton into making his case before a joint session of Congress and spoke out in favor of the bill when preaching to the converted, the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. But he had nothing to say on the subject when addressing the national convention of the A.F.L.-C.I.O, which opposed the bill. "Clinton went in there and gave it to the union right between the eyes," says D.L.C. president Al From, "but Gore didn't bring it up. For some people that raised questions about what he believes."
White House sources have been whispering that the President and First Lady are concerned that Gore, forced to protect his left flank from a populist attack by House minority leader Dick Gephardt in the 2000 primaries, will not stand up for New Democratic achievements--the balanced budget, welfare reform, economic growth--that the Clintons see as their legacy. This seems unfair, since Gore consistently argued in favor of those positions inside the White House--sometimes before the Clintons were aboard. Clinton has fretted about Gore's ability to hold firm--not because he questions Gore's beliefs but because he is not confident of Gore's political adroitness. "The President and First Lady are understandably concerned that there's going to be a lot of pressure on the Vice President to move left to cut off Gephardt," says From, who accompanied Hillary Clinton on her recent visit to British Prime Minister Tony Blair. "But when push comes to shove, Al Gore will run as a New Democrat. The lesson of Clinton 1992 is that you're better off keeping to the middle in a primary." Doing that, though, requires the kind of fancy footwork Clinton has too much of and Gore not enough.