-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">
</A> -Cui Bono?-
http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/WED/IN/gore.2.html
Paris, Wednesday, January 12, 2000
Gore's Volubility Problem: Talking Until It Hurts
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By John F. Harris Washington Post Service
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WASHINGTON - The question at a New Hampshire senior citizens center the
other day was about health care, but next thing you know Vice President Al
Gore was launched on a story about the film ''Annie Hall'' and a cameo
appearance in that movie by the media philosopher Marshall McLuhan.
Senator Edward Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, standing by Mr. Gore's
side, tilted his head in a quizzical stare. At the side of the room, aides
to the candidate shot each other nervous looks as if to say: Where on earth
is he going with this?
So where was Mr. Gore going? It's a bit complicated to explain here. But he
eventually brought the anecdote back to his point: that his health care plan
is superior to that of Bill Bradley, his rival for the Democratic
presidential nomination. Relieved aides breathed a sigh.
Sometimes they don't. Unlike, for example, Governor George W. Bush of Texas,
Mr. Gore is never accused of winging facts or not understanding policy
debates. But, in the tradition of presidential contenders stretching from
Ronald Reagan to Dan Quayle, whose aides were always braced for a blunder,
Mr. Gore is forever flirting with the next faux pas.
A tangled answer of his at a debate last week about whether he would insist
that senior commanders support his position on homosexuals in the military
was the latest illustration of how the candidate - however markedly his
style has relaxed and improved in recent months - is still grappling with a
rhetorical problem.
Simply put, according to people who have advised his campaign or analyzed
it, Mr. Gore seems to have little intuitive sense of when enough is enough.
And so he keeps talking even when it might be wiser to stop.
The results can be odd. An answer to a question about his religious beliefs
included a peculiar discussion of the respect to which atheists are
entitled. An unexpected ''town meeting'' question about a sexual assault
allegation against President Bill Clinton prompted a stammering answer that
went on excruciatingly, and to little clear purpose, for a couple of
minutes.
Campaign policy advisers learned that their candidate has staked out a new
position on medical marijuana after the fact, when a traveling political
aide interrupted a conference call to report on Mr. Gore's surprise
utterance. There have been boasts - most famously, over his claim to have
invented the Internet - that took laudable aspects of his record and
stretched them a bit too far.
The flap last week over his gays-in-the-military answer was an illustration
of how Mr. Gore gets into trouble by pressing his foot too heavily on the
rhetorical gas.
At a debate at the University of New Hampshire, the moderator asked if he
would apply a ''litmus test'' in his appointments to the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, seeking only people ''who support your gay policy.''
In presidential politics, litmus-test questions are themselves a litmus
test: Candidates always say they do not apply them. Mr. Gore at first paid
homage to this truism, noting that he has always opposed litmus tests for
Supreme Court nominations.
But then he plunged on - driven, according to sources close to the campaign,
by a determination not to yield any ground to Mr. Bradley in the Democratic
fight for the important gay vote.
''I think that it's a little different where the Joint Chiefs of Staff are
concerned,'' he said, adding that he thought that he would require those who
wanted to serve on the Joint Chiefs to be in agreement with his policy.
Mr. Gore's zeal to show he was serious on gay rights was matched by a
stubborn refusal to acknowledge that he had articulated a damaging
position - that such military leaders as Colin Powell or H. Norman
Schwarzkopf would be ineligible for command in a Gore administration since
they believe that allowing gays to serve openly hurts military
effectiveness.
After two days of internal deliberation, Democratic sources said, Mr. Gore
grudgingly agreed to state that his answer had been misinterpreted.
People who have worked closely with Mr. Gore, as campaign aides or within
the Clinton White House, offer a variety of explanations for his rhetorical
style. An intelligent and well-informed man, he sometimes wants to make sure
that everyone knows he is smart and well-informed.
And, in the case of gays in the military, Mr. Gore's zeal to show he would
go further than Mr. Clinton highlights a genuine difference: He is a more
combative person, much less prone to tactical compromise than the man who
has been his boss.
Michael Nelson, a presidential scholar at Rhodes College in Memphis,
Tennessee, said that Mr. Gore had been grappling with the same problem
during the 20 years he had been watching him: balancing a natural style that
seems ''lecturing and didactic,'' with the demands of modern campaigning to
seem ''chummy and enthusiastic.''
If the candidate stumbles, he said, ''it's not what he's going to say, but
how he's going to say it.''
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