The American Vice Presidency

by Jules Witcover

  Why he was positioning himself as the southern candidate became clear on Super Tuesday, when he won five southern state primaries. But he faltered in Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin and headed for New York, where his campaign totally collapsed. Gore’s defeat seemed to end Albert Gore Senior’s lifelong dream that his son would one day become president of the United States. It ushered in a period of depression for the son that was only deepened about six months later when his own son, six-year-old Albert, was nearly killed running into the path of a moving car.

  Gore finally shook off the near tragedy and wrote a book on his growing concerns about the perils to the environment, Earth in the Balance, which became a best-seller. He also returned to the Senate, where he prepared for another reelection campaign in 1992 and was one of ten Democrats to support President Bush’s use of military force to reverse the Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein’s invasion of neighboring Kuwait. He had reason to believe any dreams for national office were over.

  In 1992 he was out promoting the book on which he had diligently worked over the past two years, when Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas won the Democratic presidential nomination and addressed the selection of a running mate. After George Bush’s startling selection of Dan Quayle to run with him on the Republican ticket, Clinton was determined that his own choice be seen as clearly qualified to assume the presidency if required. Gore’s experience in foreign policy and the environment shored up Clinton’s weaknesses, and in a two-hour meeting between the two southerners who did not know each other well, a developing compatibility emerged that sealed the deal.

  Immediately upon adjournment of the Democratic convention in New York, a caravan of buses carrying the candidates, staffs, and several busloads of reporters flowed across much of the eastern United States in what was soon dubbed “Bill and Al’s Excellent Adventure.” Each had his own bus, but before long they were riding together, getting more acquainted, swapping campaign stories, and generally comporting themselves like two young buddies on a summer’s lark. Wherever the bus caravan stopped, throngs of locals flocked to see and hear the candidates.

  They shared the speaking chore like a duet, breaking the tradition that the principals seldom campaign together. They worked up a routine that came off in time as more vaudeville or road show than political exercise. Gore would warm up the crowd with a rollicking jibing of the opposition ticket: “Bush and Quayle have run out of ideas. They’re run out of energy. They’re run out of gas, and with your help come November, they’re going to be run out of office!” He would conclude the pitch shouting, “It’s time for Bush and Quayle to go!” Then he would ask the crowd: “What time is it?” and the response would come with a roar: “It’s time for them to go!” Through all this, the supposedly wooden robot Al Gore would grin contagiously while Clinton would throw his head back and roar as if he were seeing and hearing it all for the first time.5 Often the two candidates would sit together on the lead bus, talking away for long periods as the reporters cooled their heels outside. Once, the pair sat gabbing so long that the press corps en masse started to rock the bus until they sheepishly emerged.

  In the late fall, a single vice presidential debate was held. For Quayle, it was an opportunity to redeem himself after four years of his humiliating “You’re no Jack Kennedy” spanking by the 1984 Democratic running mate Lloyd Bentsen. Early in the debate Gore injected that bad memory for Quayle by offering him a deal: “If you don’t try to compare George Bush to Harry Truman, I won’t compare you to Jack Kennedy.” But then, Gore made the same allegation of unpreparedness by recalling how Truman was suddenly called to the presidency with the death of FDR with World War II still going on in the Pacific.6

  Thereafter in the debate, Quayle gave a much better accounting of himself and easily exceeded low expectations by largely focusing on Clinton rather than Gore. Postdebate polling still rated Gore the winner, but he was afforded little credit, considering the perceived view of Quayle. In November, Clinton-Gore won easily as voter participation—55.2 percent—rose for the first time in thirty-two years.

  After the election, Clinton and Gore met in Little Rock and worked out an agreement on how the new vice president would function, patterned after the Mondale model in the Carter administration. In a break with the Mondale model, Gore also would have specified fields of interest, areas in which he had already developed expertise, such as arms control and disarmament, the environment, high tech, including the Internet, and other new means of communications.7

  Yet the new vice president’s hope and intention of being Clinton’s prime right-hand man was complicated by others within the president’s own circle vying for the role. First among them obviously was wife Hillary. She particularly seemed to some administration aides to resent Gore’s role and his face time with her husband. Gore for his part kept a sharp personal eye for Oval Office meetings about which he may not have been apprised.8 As Clinton got himself into various scrapes, foreign and domestic, Gore remained solidly in support. According to Clinton’s national security adviser, Anthony Lake, “If you’re vice president, it’s possible to pick and choose, to be there on some issues and take a walk on others that could have a tough edge to them.” But Gore, he said, “never took a walk,” at least not at this juncture.9

  Domestically, Gore took on a direct Clinton assignment to review the performance of the federal establishment, a review known in shorthand as “reinventing government.” After an intense six-month study, Gore made 384 recommendations for overhauling and streamlining government regulations and rule making, claiming they would save taxpayers $108 billion and eliminate 252,000 federal jobs in the next five years.

  Perhaps more influential in his political stature was Gore’s leading role in late 1993 in winning congressional approval of the new North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico and Canada, ending most tariffs and other taxes among three countries. The pact was put forward as a major weapon for creating new markets for American goods among the neighboring states and more jobs at home. The failed third-party candidate of 1992, Perot, took up the fight. He colorfully proclaimed that passage would trigger a “giant sucking sound” of lost jobs in the American economy caused by many domestic companies moving to Mexico to take advantage of sharply lower labor costs.

  Gore was recruited to challenge Perot to a televised debate on NAFTA and Clinton agreed. Gore realized the debate posed a considerable risk for him, and he prepared for the encounter with a mock rehearsal similar to those he had undergone in debating Dan Quayle the previous year. Against Perot, he took a needling approach, peppering him with questions about some of his famously off-the-wall claims and thereafter was credited with giving NAFTA a strong boost in Congress, which passed both houses with bipartisan support.

  But other problems in the administration continued to intrude on its public approval, casting doubts on the political value of the vice presidency for the man so obviously with his eye still on the Oval Office. Investigation of the Clintons’ involvement in a questionable land purchase in Arkansas, dubbed “Whitewater,” and the demise of Hillary Clinton’s secrecy-prone quest for universal health care reform contributed to midterm congressional elections in 1994 that gave the Republicans control of the House for the first time in forty-one years, along with the Senate. A conservative “revolution” led by the bombastic Newt Gingrich of Georgia made him House Speaker, bent on bringing down Bill Clinton, with uncertain ramifications for Al Gore.

  In early 1995, the president clearly was in a funk, obliging him to respond to a question about his diminishing clout by insisting, “The president is relevant here.”10 At Gore’s urging, Clinton enlisted an old pollster-strategist, Dick Morris, to design an expensive television advertising campaign that deftly moved him more to the center of the political spectrum in what was called “triangulation,” positioning him somewhere between the poles of liberalism and conservatism.

  Gore and Morris both pressed Clinton to take Gingrich head on with his own balance
d budget proposal. Clinton finally called the Speaker’s bluff, warning he would close down the government rather than yield to Gingrich’s demand for various social service cuts. Charging, “The Republican Congress has failed to pass most of its spending bills,” Clinton sent home eight hundred thousand federal workers, closing many public facilities, including national parks, a move that backfired on Gingrich.11 The president carried the day and shortly was back on track, and Gore with him.

  The costly television advertising campaign that accompanied the comeback strategy, unusually early in an election cycle, obliged Gore to engage in heavy fund-raising through the Democratic National Committee (DNC). It soon brought negative news media attention to the vice president, putting an unwelcome spotlight on him in advance of the Clinton-Gore reelection campaign of 1996. Many big-cash donors not only attended fund-raising dinners around the country but also had access to the White House and even some overnight stays in the Lincoln Bedroom. Gore held nearly two dozen coffees in the Executive Mansion, some attended by Clinton, and made numerous phone calls to potential donors. All this effort raised a reported $8.74 million. Such calls were not unusual, except that an 1882 law, the Pendleton Act, prohibited asking for or raising campaign contributions from federal offices and buildings, and Gore made many of them from his office in the West Wing.

  The furor over Gore’s solicitation of campaign funds intensified after the convention when reporters began looking into the “bundling” of large amounts for the DNC from the Asian American community, by John Huang, an executive of an Indonesian banking firm. The most eyebrow-raising event was a fund-raiser at a Buddhist temple in suburban Los Angeles at which Gore spoke and more than a hundred thousand dollars was raised. The temple had a federal tax exemption, prohibiting its use in seeking political contributions at such events. Gore insisted he understood it was not to be a fund-raiser and made no overt pitch for campaign money.12

  Subsequent evidence made clear that the temple event was what it appeared to be, and a year later Gore acknowledged it was a “political event” at which it was “inappropriate” for him to engage in fund-raising. Seven times he cited a lawyer’s conclusion, in lawyerly language, that “no controlling legal authority” prevented him from making soliciting calls from his White House office.13

  None of this, however, was enough to bar the easy 1996 reelection of Clinton and Gore over the uninspiring Republican team of Bob Dole of Kansas and Jack Kemp of New York. But further congressional inquiries into fund-raising involving Gore continued well into 1997.

  At an international summit on the perils of global warming and other climate change, held in Kyoto, Japan, at year’s end, the administration’s proposal on limiting greenhouse pollution disappointed advocates. Gore at first decided not to attend this major meeting on the issue with which he was so identified. He finally made a brief trip, promising the other conference attendants only that the United States would provide “increased negotiating flexibility” in discussions. He returned with only modest agreement on emissions goals achieved in the first serious effort at reducing global warming, but enough to keep alive what for him was a crusade.

  Greeting him on his return was a shocking revival of the womanizing allegations against Clinton that had long haunted his political career. This time it was the revelation that a young White House intern named Monica Lewinsky was said to have had sexual relations with Clinton within the Oval Office itself. Clinton denied the story emphatically but with more word games that only enhanced suspicions of his truthfulness raised in previous sagas. Gore met them with a categorical acceptance and pledge of support, saying, “The president has denied the charges, and I believe him.”14 Gore purposely traveled with the beleaguered president, making no mention of the scandal. When Clinton admitted to a grand jury that he had had “inappropriate intimate contact” and deeply regretted it, Gore said only it was “time to take what he said to heart and move on to the people’s business.”15

  As the investigation of Clinton’s sexual misconduct proceeded on a track that was eventually to lead to impeachment by the House of Representatives, Gore gamely focused on legislative objectives close to his interests. But as Clinton’s personal misdeeds drew more menacing to his presidency with each new disclosure, Gore’s own role in the inner circle inevitably diminished. In one meeting Clinton held with cabinet members and Democratic congressional leaders, Gore was said to have urged them all to stand behind the president, while warning him, “Mr. President, I think most of America has forgiven you, but you’ve got to get your act together.”16

  In the 1998 midterm congressional elections, for which Gore loyally campaigned, the Democrats surprisingly held the line, yielding no Senate seats while picking up five in the House. Gore got some more welcome news in the fall when Attorney General Janet Reno announced she would not recommend appointment of an independent counsel to look any further into Gore’s fund-raising activities.

  But on December 19, 1998, the House voted two articles of impeachment against Clinton, one for lying under oath to a grand jury and one for obstructing justice, sending the matter to the Senate for trial. Immediately afterward, eighty House Democrats were bused to the White House, where they gathered on the South Lawn. As a red-eyed Clinton stood by, Gore said of the occasion, “This is the saddest day I have seen in our nation’s capital.” He added that while Clinton had admitted that what he had done was wrong, so was “invoking the solemn power of impeachment [against him] in the cause of partisan politics.” Gore said, “What happened as a result does a great disservice to a man I believe will be regarded in the history books as one of our greatest presidents.”17

  The statement was startling in its fulsome endorsement of the Clinton record if not of the man himself. Clinton was subsequently acquitted of the impeachment charges against him, saved only by votes of Democratic senators, many repulsed by the whole sordid mess.

  But Gore’s endorsement notwithstanding, he, like most previous vice presidents who had sought the presidency, ultimately strove to establish his own identity. In launching his 2000 presidential campaign in Carthage, Gore decided to low-ball his participation in the Clinton administration and did not to ask Clinton to play a major role in his campaign. Also, in light of Gore’s embarrassing and arguably illegal excesses in fund-raising, he had to guard against more bad stories as he strove to finance his own effort.

  The major challenge to Gore came from the former senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey, famed as a Princeton and New York Knicks basketball star. In a debate in Iowa on farm policy, Gore researchers found a local farmer whose land had been flooded and placed him in the debate audience. He asked Bradley about an obscure vote of his against a disaster relief amendment. Bradley, taken aback, fumbled the question with a weak and evasive answer and never recovered.18 Gore, with strong labor and agricultural support, not only won the Iowa caucuses but also went on to beat Bradley in the New Hampshire primary and subsequent state contests, driving Bradley from the race.

  Selecting his running mate, Gore broke new ground by choosing Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, a dedicated moderate and champion of the state of Israel, as the first member of the Jewish faith to serve on a national ticket. The Republican nominee, Governor George W. Bush of Texas, meanwhile asked the former congressman and defense secretary Richard Cheney to find the best running mate for him, and Cheney wound up being chosen himself, as described in the next chapter.

  In emulation of the Clinton-Gore bus tours, Gore and Lieberman kicked off their campaign on a Mississippi riverboat but failed to replicate the magic of the earlier romp; their chemistry was just not there. Gore set a populist tone for the campaign by declaring, “The difference in this election is, they’re for the powerful, we’re for the people.”19 In saying so, Gore appeared to be casting his lot more with the old FDR and Truman Democrats than with the New Democrats of Clinton, a matter that in time came to be a bone of contention with the cantankerous Lieberman.

  In what was de
veloping into an extremely close race between Gore and Bush, the vice president joined the first of three debates with high expectations against the Ivy Leaguer–turned–Texan son of a former president, known for often wrestling with the English language and getting pinned. In the first meeting Gore came off as a bullying know-it-all, to his detriment in postdebate analyses. Some of Bush’s answers brought smirks, audible sighs of impatience, and incredulity and raised eyebrows from the superior-posturing Gore.

  The campaign ended with polls indicating a very close race but with no indication of the astonishing and unprecedented outcome. Although Gore had won the national popular vote by more than half a million ballots, neither candidate had a majority in the electoral college. After weeks of recounting and appraising a relative handful of votes in the single state of Florida, Bush was awarded its twenty-five electoral votes and the presidency in a split decision of the United States Supreme Court. In a battle of lawyers and political wits between the Gore and Bush campaigns, the highest federal court, of Republican majority composition at the time, voted to intervene in a state election against the court’s own longstanding precedent to leave such matters to the lower courts.