By all appearances, it was a relaxing evening, a cozy dinner for four. The hosts served filet of sole and good white wine. They gave the guests a tour of the house, a Victorian mansion on a hill, then sat them down in the living room, where they all swapped child-rearing stories and cooed over wedding albums.
But this was no ordinary dinner, no ordinary time. The date was Jan. 24, 1998, three days after an atom bomb named Monica was dropped on the capital. The hosts were Al and Tipper Gore; House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt and his wife Jane were their guests. Washington was radioactive--the press was on a round-the-clock Clinton death watch--and there was private tension as well. A month before, Gephardt had delivered a scathing speech at Harvard, attacking Democrats who practice "the politics of small ideas" and replace compassion with "momentary calculation." Everyone knew whom he was talking about--and now the subject of his speech had invited the Gephardts to dinner.
Gore and Gephardt had been rivals at least since their brutal sparring as also-rans in the 1988 presidential primaries and probably since the day in 1977 when they arrived in Congress as the smartest boys in a class in which all the members considered themselves most likely to succeed. Now, in challenging Gore for the 2000 nomination, Gephardt was prepared to wage nothing less than a struggle for their party's soul. All of which might have given the two plenty to talk about at dinner, except they didn't talk about any of it. Gore never brought up the Harvard speech, and no one mentioned the White House intern. The evening, Gephardt later remarked privately, "could not have been more surreal."
That's what he thought at the time. But a year later, Gore and Gephardt are on the verge of becoming the closest of allies, linking their destinies in a pact of mutually assured ambition. This week, as Gore's team quietly installs the phones and sets up desks in his new presidential-campaign headquarters, nine blocks from the White House, Gephardt is expected to make a splashy announcement about his own bid--for Speaker of the House. All indications are that having set aside the dream of becoming President, the 58-year-old Congressman from St. Louis, Mo., will announce his intention to stay put and pour his energies into winning the six seats needed to retake the House from the Republicans in 2000. Such is the transformational power of the Lewinsky scandal. Says a top presidential aide: "Republicans pushed Democrats into each other's arms, whether we liked it or not."
Gore has found the silver lining in Bill Clinton's scandal. Gephardt was the most threatening of half a dozen Democrats preparing to run against him, but the field has evaporated. Only Bill Bradley has announced; Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, another long shot, may join him. Other contenders--Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, Bob Kerrey of Nebraska--bowed out before getting in. Though each offers different reasons for not running, all fell victim to the same untamable force.