As the damaging jokes multiply, Gore tries to butt out

By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff, April 9, 1999

WASHINGTON -- After serving more than six years as vice president, Al Gore is facing one of the toughest challenges of his career: being the butt of a joke.

First, Gore said he and his wife served as the models for the tear-jerker novel, "Love Story." (Not entirely so.) A month ago, Gore took credit for "creating" the Internet. (He helped expand it.) Then, the vice president boasted that as a child he learned to slop hogs on the family farm. (But he didn't mention that he had spent much of his childhood living in a fancy Washington hotel.)

Republicans have wasted no time mocking the man they assume will be the Democratic presidential nominee. In recent days, the Republican Leadership Council, which boosts moderate GOP candidates, paid for an advertising campaign that lists Gore gaffes and mocks vice presidential "reinventing" of reality. The ad ends by zinging Gore in a computerized voice familiar to anyone who has used America Online: "Goodbye!"

For Gore, this is no laughing matter. Gore aides are aware that their candidate is largely undefined in the public mind and remember how former vice president Dan Quayle's spelling mistake and other miscues became a metaphor for Quayle's supposed lack of intelligence.

"It matters whether you are the butt of Letterman and Leno jokes for two years," said a political analyst, Stuart Rothenberg, referring to late-night television hosts David Letterman and Jay Leno. He said Gore could be hurt "if this seeps into the electorate's consciousness, that he exaggerates and you can't believe everything he says."

There is a vivid history of politicians remembered for words and actions that seemed trivial at the time. Gerald R. Ford, an athlete, is remembered for his stumbles. Jimmy Carter, an outdoorsman, is recalled for his encounter with a "killer rabbit." And Quayle, who is now seeking the Republican nomination, is widely viewed as a long shot partly because of his misstatements and his noted misspelling of potato as "potatoe."

It remains to be seen whether Gore's lone Democratic primary opponent, former Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey, will be helped by Gore's gaffes. But one beneficiary has been Quayle, who recently tweaked Gore over the matter, referring to a feature of many computer word processing programs. If Gore created the Internet, Quayle said, "then I invented the spell check."

A Gore spokesman, Chris Lehane, said the attacks are unfair. Lehane said Gore did "play a leading role" in creating today's version of the Internet, and did live on a Tennessee farm for many summers.

"What is pretty clear is that the Republicans don't have anything positive to talk about, so what they are doing is attacking the vice president," Lehane said. "We are going to continue to talk about Al Gore's compelling life story."

Indeed, the Republicans are copying the strategy used by the Democrats in 1996 by trying to "define" Gore before he does. In the last presidential campaign, the Democratic National Committee spent millions of dollars on ads that attacked Bob Dole, long before he became the Republican nominee. The ads played a major role in pushing down Dole's approval rating, and the Clinton-Gore campaign easily won reelection.

The Republican ads use humor to deliver a potentially devastating message: Gore shades the truth.

Jim Nicholson, chairman of the Republican National Committee, has spent the past week mocking Gore. On Monday, for example, Nicholson issued a statement criticizing Gore for attending a Beverly Hills fund-raiser while bombs were falling on Belgrade and refugees were fleeing Kosovo.

"You'd expect more sensitivity from the guy who inspired 'Love Story,' " Nicholson said sarcastically.

Nicholson, in an interview, said, "There is nothing complicated about what we have been doing. We just think that Gore is so into himself and his self-importance. And for some reason he has gotten into an epidemic of overblowing his own importance with these exaggerated claims. He is doing it to himself."

In fairness, Gore often is self-deprecating and witty. He has joked that he is so stiff that people cannot tell the difference between him and his Secret Service agents. But Gore also has been awkward and defensive in public, as when he defended his campaign fund-raising practices by saying there was "no controlling legal authority" regarding his actions.

In each Gore gaffe, there is some truth and perhaps some exaggeration. For example, Gore went to Harvard while "Love Story" author Erich Segal was doing his graduate studies. Segal has said he modeled the lead male character, Oliver, partly on Gore but also on Gore's roommate, the actor Tommy Lee Jones. Oliver's love, Jenny, apparently was modeled on someone other than on Tipper Gore.

Last month, Gore seemed to be irked when Bradley, a former NBA star, touted his "life experiences" and implicitly questioned Gore's. The vice president responded by telling an Iowa audience about life on the farm with his father.

"He taught me how to clean out hog waste with a shovel and a hose," Gore said. "He taught me how to clear land with a double-bladed ax. He taught me how to plow a steep hillside with a team of mules. He taught me how to take up hay all day long in the hot sun and then after a dinner break go over and help the neighbors take up hay before the rain came and spoiled it on the ground. I wonder if Senator Bradley has had any of those life experiences?"

While Gore did spend summers on his family's farm, he spent much of his childhood in Washington, where his father was a senator and the family lived in a six-room apartment on the eighth floor of Washington's fancy Fairfax Hotel. He attended the elite St. Albans school in Washington.

As for his computer prowess, Gore told CNN on March 9: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

That comment prompted Republicans to note that the Internet actually was established by the Pentagon around 1969. But Gore aides, and numerous Internet authorities, do give the vice president credit for pushing legislation that helped create today's version of the Internet, which is far different from what the Pentagon started. Gore aides hope the publicity will help Gore in the long run.

But Gore suffered another Internet-related embarrassment on Tuesday. After having championed legislation that prevents commercial web sites from seeking a child's e-mail address and other information without parental consent, Gore unveiled his campaign Web site that included a "Kid's Corner" that sought such personal information from children. After realizing the contradiction, the Gore campaign rewrote the Web page to ask only for a child's first name.

Asked about his Internet statement during a visit to California this week, Gore said, "I'm proud of the work that I did do in the Congress to help facilitate the development of the Internet as we know it." But when pressed on his claim of creating it, Gore tried to make a joke.

"The day I made that statement," Gore said, "I was tired because I had been up all night inventing the Camcorder."