WASHINGTON -- The vice president's campaign manager is confident that the upcoming convention will allow the veep to escape the president's shadow. ''People want to know more about him and satisfy themselves that he's his own man,'' the manager says.
''The vice president made a conscious decision seven years ago to be a number two, and as a result of that, he has not been front-and-center,'' he explains. ''In a very real sense, Thursday night will be the first time that he will be front and center for the American people.''
Worry not about the polls. ''The public hasn't been focusing on the presidential election, and when they start focusing on it, they're going to start thinking about things like the economy.'' The other party, the manager adds, ''is trying to hide from the issues. I don't blame them because they've gotten slammed the last couple of times because they were wrong on the issues.''
The vice president heartily agrees. ''Part of our job at our convention and part of my job as the standard-bearer,'' he says, ''will be to get these good things in focus. Elections are normally determined by the state of the economy, and the state of the economy is A-1.'' The voters ''are not going to want to recklessly change, gamble with the economic future.''
The president declares that the American people know that the vice president is ''their guarantee that peace and prosperity today will be followed by more peace and prosperity tomorrow.'' The incumbent adds: ''I don't think the American people want to gamble their future on a blind date.''
All this commentary was offered 12 years ago, on the eve of the Republican National Convention. The vice president, George Bush, won the election. The shrewd campaign manager was the late Lee Atwater, the president, Ronald Reagan.
Who knew analysis could stay fresh for 12 years? David Gergen thought the vice president would do fine in his acceptance speech. ''He has to sort of calm down,'' Gergen counseled, ''and present himself as he truly is through the camera, and I think he's capable of doing that.'' Gergen was talking to Jim Lehrer on Aug. 12, 1988.
George F. Will saw the opposition as forced to talk about scandal because it had little else to criticize. ''Good news at home and abroad has reduced the out-of-power party to talking extravagantly about `ethics.''' That party, Will added presciently, needed to blur the issues. ''Blurring makes it seem safer for voters to support the new boy on the block who satisfies the constant national hankering for novelty.'' Will's column was published on Aug. 14, 1988.
Who needs to say any more in advance of the coming week's Democratic convention? Well, Bush faced no insurgency to his right, as Gore does from Ralph Nader to his left. The positive difference for Gore can be summarized in the names Joe Lieberman and Dan Quayle.
Bush waited until convention week to announce (and get panned for) his choice of Quayle. Gore won several extra days of bounce by picking Lieberman early, to largely positive reviews and national fascination with the decision to name the first Jew to a national ticket. ''They're talking about Lieberman on sports radio,'' says Tom O'Donnell, a Democratic consultant, ''and when that happens, you know you're talking about an event that goes beyond politics.''
Other than that, just change the names on the '88 stuff. Tad Devine, a Gore senior strategist, says the coming convention will emphasize Gore's biography - as a vice president, he's still not well known. Another major goal, Devine said, is ''reassurance'' that Gore ''does share their values.'' (Or, as Republican consultant Roger Stone put it before the 1988 convention, ''We have to get people to say, `George Bush may not be what I am, but he thinks like I think.''')
There will be issues: prescription drugs for seniors, the environment, a patients' bill of rights, Social Security - all built around a sense the GOP is out of step when it comes to specifics. And like the 1988 Republicans, the 2000 Democrats will paint the boom times as their side's achievement being put at risk by the other. ''People have to understand that all this stuff didn't just happen, that we weren't just standing around.'' says Al From of the Democratic Leadership Council.
Who knows if Gore's people are right that the election result will also follow the script. But you can know that for the next week, Al Gore will share George W.'s role model: George Herbert Walker Bush, a beleaguered vice president who knew how to put a convention to good use.
E.J. Dionne Jr. is a syndicated columnist.
