A clear sense of challenge
A nominee of many phase lays out his own agenda
OS ANGELES - For eight years the vice president has had a prominent place on the national stage, for four days the Democrats have spoken of the Al Gore hardly anyone knows, and for one hour last night he appeared before the American people, shorn of advisers, free of props, apart from the president who has overshadowed him.
''I stand here tonight as my own man,'' he said, ''and I want you to know me for who I truly am.''
The Al Gore whom Al Gore wanted the nation to see last night is a populist, with an antagonism to entrenched interests; a fighter, with a taste for the battle; and a reformer, with an impatience for the way things are.
All that plus a thinker, with no fear of specifics. Gore set out to add depth and perspective to the sketch Americans have of him, and his strategy clearly was to show that he is a man of depth and perspective.
Few national conventions and, in turn, few presidential campaigns have depended as heavily on the candidate's performance as Gore's did on a night designed to claim the nomination and place a claim on the nation's heart.
In that atmosphere, and under that pressure, the vice president just might have succeeded.
He spoke animatedly, often powerfully, even passionately, providing Americans with the first evidence that he might have the personal characteristics to carry through with the promises he made, and with the promise he showed last night.
And though the campaign has struggled to reconcile two notions - that Gore wants to continue the Clinton-era prosperity even as he wants to separate himself from Clinton-era scandals - the Democrats' new presidential nominee made it clear he would be no mere steward of what preceded him.
The economy is strong, the world is at peace, and at this moment, on a balmy Southern California night, the vice president made an audacious remark: ''I am not satisfied.''
He envisions a style of leadership that will sow the notion of personal responsibility, not simply speak of it; a society that will make parents' jobs easier, not harder; an economic culture that will give the striving and middle classes, and not just the educated and the elite, a larger chunk of the product of the American prosperity engine.
Much of that is the New Democratic agenda that Clinton never accomplished, or that Clinton's own comportment made it impossible to achieve. Moreover, Gore's view of the presidency is rooted more in his own experience as a congressman and senator and as a presidential candidate than in what he witnessed as vice president.
His presidency would be, in a word freighted with meaning in the information age, interactive.
As a lawmaker, Gore held a continual series of town meetings each weekend, listening to ordinary people, staying in touch. As a presidential candidate, he vowed to answer every last question, sometimes remaining at an event site even as the maintenance crew was completing its last rounds of a near-empty hall. And as president, he vowed last night, he will keep the lines open, meeting with people continually ''because I want to stay in touch with your hopes, with the quiet, every-day heroism of hard-working Americans.''
He foreshadowed the principal themes of the Democrats' fall campaign: health care, education, economic security, the environment, campaign-finance reform, and a national government that is strong but not reckless. But Gore's performance last night also indicated that the Democrats' campaign will be shaped to the vulnerabilities they believe are imbedded in Governor George W. Bush's campaign: experience in government and fluency with the mechanical physics of politics.
His remarks were full of graceful turns of phrase and gentle asides, and when the vice president spoke of ''the daring grace of the human spirit,'' he invoked as well the spirit of John F. Kennedy's 1960 acceptance speech, when the Massachusetts senator first set forth the idea of the New Frontier.
Few shimmering phrases emerged from Gore's remarks, but the speech included much of the tone - especially the sense of challenge - of the Kennedy speech. ''In our democracy, the future is not something that just happens to us; it is something we make for ourselves - together,'' he said. ''So to the young people watching tonight, I say: This is your time to make new the life of our world. We need your help to rekindle the spirit of America.''
Last night's speech was also intended to rekindle the Gore campaign, and Democrats - hungry for hope at the end of a four-day convention that lacked drama - left here believing that Gore accomplished that.
His language was genuine, and students of the Gore idiom recognized many phrases from the vice president's rhetorical repertoire.
There were moments of pedantry, to be sure, and a few of self-aggrandizement, but there was urgency, too, and for many Americans, the Al Gore who appeared on their television screens seemed personable and, perhaps, persuasive. The presidency, Gore said, is ''a day-by-day fight,'' and last night Gore succeeded in at least one task: He convinced his own troops that he can - and will - conduct a day-by-day fight for the presidency.
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