ES MOINES - Vice President Al Gore came to the first-in-the-nation caucus state this weekend and pleaded for his political life.
This is a crucial time for the vice president as he attempts to right his listing candidacy. In Iowa, Gore's support remains strong; in New Hampshire, he has been slipping in the polls while Bradley has been rising. A win in Iowa could propel him to the top in New Hampshire.
''I need your help,'' Gore told several hundred supporters at a rally on the banks of the Des Moines River. ''You have a chance to make a decisive and powerful statement that will echo and reverberate all over the entire nation.''
To be sure, Gore's performance at the annual Jefferson-Jackson Democratic dinner Saturday also included a rapid-fire attack on Bill Bradley's qualifications as a Democrat, as well as his loyalty to farmers, teachers and working people.
But there was more to the assault on the former New Jersey senator than that. In his rhetoric, Gore has begun trying to defuse Bradley's appeal by adopting the former senator's words and ideas on the stump, echoing his opponent's call for racial unity and for lifting the political process to a higher plane with a positive vision for the future.
''He's appropriating our language,'' charged Anita Dunn, Bradley's communications director. ''Maybe he's decided it's a successful approach. For Bill Bradley it's genuine.''
Indeed, one Gore adviser acknowledged, ''We flipped the dialectic.'' The tactic, he said, was meant to reduce Bradley's momentum and help position Gore as the eager underdog.
During the past year, Bradley has offered himself to voters as a different kind of candidate running a different sort of campaign. ''Wouldn't it be refreshing to have more than sound bites and photo ops when you're choosing a candidate for president?'' one black-and white-poster for Bradley asks.
His speeches on the campaign trail are consistent for his stories of growing up in the small town of Crystal City, Mo., for his talk about his mother and his father, for the values that shaped him and the dreams he has for the future of the country.
Gore, on the other hand, only recently began talking about his mother and father, telling stories of growing up in the small town of Carthage, Tenn., of the values that shaped him and his hopes for the nation.
A senior strategist for the vice president called the recent polls in New Hampshire ''a wake-up call'' to the candidate and the campaign, resulting in a new approach by Gore to better relate to voters.
Everywhere Bradley goes, he tells voters that racial unity is a top priority for him. For Gore, the subject of race in his speeches is a more recent addition.
''You know I'm for bringing the races together,'' Gore said at the rally. On Saturday night and in several other recent speeches, he told of his father taking him into the basement of a rich neighbor's home and showing him the slave rings on the wall.
And while Bradley says he talks about race everywhere he goes, Gore told the Iowans here that he talks about the farm crisis everywhere he goes. (In fact, it is a subject that rarely comes up when he visits New Hampshire.)
On another topic, campaigns and elections, Bradley has said that politicians must honor and respect the people by offering a positive vision and refraining from mudslinging.
''It takes discipline to be positive because it's easy to slip the other way,'' Bradley said.
When Gore opened his new campaign headquarters in Nashville recently, he too, said he wanted to run a different kind of campaign, offer a positive vision for the future and draw in people who felt disenfranchised.
''The entire opening statement was Bill Bradley,'' said Dunn.
Gore also has called for debates with Bradley using loftier language than he is known for. ''Why not use this campaign as a way to elevate the election process to make it worthy of our democracy?'' he now asks.
The Bradley campaign views Gore's changing stump speech with disdain, the mark of a politician who does not know what he's all about.
''For Bill Bradley, the themes he's talking about and where he needs to go haven't been grafted on him by pollsters for this race,'' Dunn said, suggesting that Gore has borrowed the outline of his new narrative from Bradley.
One Gore official, however, disputes the notion that the vice president has somehow begun copying Bradley.
''These guys obviously have 75 percent of their issues overlap,'' said a senior Gore strategist. ''They're running for the Democratic nomination.''
And when it comes to talking about debates and ennobling the electoral process, the strategist said Bradley should take it as a compliment. ''I don't think we mimicked Bradley,'' he said. ''The vice president agrees with him.''
But primarily, Gore's visit to Iowa this weekend was a flat-out appeal for help.
Gore asked not just for people's votes. He also asked voters to talk to their neighbors about him, to organize more support, to drive friends and family to the caucus sites come January.
''We're at a fork in the road,'' Gore said. ''A lot's going to be decided by this election. And I need your help in these caucuses because you have the opportunity to say more and do more and speak more loudly and decisively than anybody else in the United States of America.''
