NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE / DAVID M. SHRIBMAN

As Gore runs, Clinton follows

By David M. Shribman, Globe Staff, April 27, 1999

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- The Republican presidential race has the explosive issue (abortion), the unpredictable character (Patrick J. Buchanan), the romantic insurgent (Gary Bauer), the alluring mystery man (George W. Bush), the methodical grind (Lamar Alexander), the innocent underdog (Dan Quayle), the unreconstructed warrior (John McCain), the whimsical wunderkind (John R. Kasich) and the unconventional outsider (Elizabeth H. Dole).

But it's the Democratic race, with the two boring and balding, middle-aged and moderate, respectable and responsible, pensive and pedantic guys that's really interesting.

Bill Bradley and Al Gore are both Ivy Leaguers. They disagree on almost nothing. Their personal lives are unassailable. Their impulses are similar. (Bradley gave a speech about race last week, Gore gives one this week.) Their generational outlooks are identical. Plan for a ground war between these two men.

The Republican race is frozen in place, waiting for state legislators in Austin to free Bush from his comfortable captivity in Texas and for handlers in Washington to release Dole from the velvet confines of her own isolation chamber.

But the Democratic race is changing every day.

At last look, the vice president was streaking to victory, winning the endorsement of commissioners in counties you never knew existed, grabbing contributions from entrepreneurs whose e-companies were still an IPO in Wall Street's eyes. At last look, Gore was masterly maneuvering all his rivals out of the way, smiling pleasingly as a parade of Democratic challengers -- Richard Gephardt of Missouri, Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, John Kerry of Massachusetts -- stood down from the race.

And at last look, Gore was gliding toward the nomination on the jet stream of peace and prosperity.

No more. Peace is yesterday's reverie. Bradley doesn't have any endorsements from New York borough presidents or Chicago aldermen, but he does have Dave DeBusschere, Phil Jackson, and Willis Reed from the Knicks (and DeBusschere's experience as a White Sox pitcher and Jackson's as the Bulls' coach might count for something in Cook County). In any case, they're worth about the same as standard-issue politicians at this point, though in a contest where the rebound might take on special importance, Bradley might not be as behind as the experts say.

But the primary problem is that the Democratic race has become, as Gore's high-tech friends say, binary. Anyone who has spent as much time as Gore in Silicon Valley shouldn't be surprised that the result is Bradley is in the default position.

Right now there are a few surprising signs of life in Bradley's campaign and a few startling signs of weakness in Gore's. Don't bet the gym on Bradley's prospects, but don't count him out, either.

The principal reason: A string of responsible polls shows President Clinton's approval ratings dropping along with the bombs in Yugoslavia.

The ties between Gore and President Clinton are stronger than the ones between Slobodan Milosevic and Kosovo. All their destinies are intertwined. And Gore's future is no less wrapped up in aerial bombing in 2000 than Hubert Humphrey's was in 1968. That is a chilling thought for the vice president's camp now that Clinton's approach to Belgrade seems to be the same as Ulysses S. Grant's approach to Spotsylvania in the fourth year of the Civil War: "I intend to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer."

Ordinarily the comparison between Gore and Clinton might redound to the vice president's benefit. Gore insiders like to say Americans are ready for a little less personality in the White House, a meeting of the moment (post-Monica ennui) and the man (the wooden guy in Air Force 2). But the bad news from recent days doesn't bear that out.

Bad: A recent poll by the Pew Research Center has some unsettling comparisons, chief among them the finding that Gore's support among women, a critical constituency for Democrats, is far below Clinton's.

Worse: A Gallup Organization survey is showing that Senator McCain would be the only major GOP contender in danger of losing a general-election matchup with Gore.

Worst: The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News Poll found that about a third of voters believe the vice president's weakness is "his association with President Clinton." No wonder the people who search through the entrails of Gore's speeches are finding that he is mentioning the president's name less frequently.

And so the sobering fact at the end of the Clinton years is that the Democratic contest to choose his successor isn't about Al Gore or Bill Bradley after all. Like everything else since he came to national prominence in 1992, it is all about Bill Clinton.