OUNT VERNON, Va. - Jeffrey Lloyd drives schoolchildren by the busload to George Washington's home here, hoping that hearing the story of a man who exemplified strong character, patriotism, and self-discipline will teach them the virtues of presidential leadership and stiffen their own moral fiber.
A Democrat, a retired police officer, and the father of a teenager, Lloyd says Al Gore is ''a decent man'' who sadly did not have the strength to distance himself from President Clinton's weak character. Come November, he plans to vote for Texas Governor George W. Bush.
Valerie Gerheiser last week chaperoned several dozen middle-schoolers on a pre-Memorial Day field trip to the Founding Father's Potomac River plantation. She called the last four years ''a black spot on our country'' and said that, for the sake of her family, she will do her part to guarantee that the blemish is not permanent.
''I'm sure there are some things George Bush and I disagree on. But no way will I vote for Al Gore, who stood there in Clinton's shadow, not if you paid me. It's time for a change,'' said Gerheiser of Crofton, Md., a stay-at-home parent of two adolescents. She voted for Bob Dole in 1996.
Something odd is happening to Gore, by all accounts a happily married and faithful husband, a devoted father and doting grandfather, and a conscientious advocate for families. He has fallen into a yawning ''marriage gap'' that is mostly about morality, somewhat about his masculinity, minimally about issues, and, if not reversed, could doom him on Election Day.
Republican candidates typically get a larger share of the vote from married people, whose worries about mortgages and tuition bills and the security of their offspring tend to make them more conservative.
But what pollsters have seen this month is something new. Bush leads Gore by 26 points among married men and 14 points among married women in a Los Angeles Times poll, and Bush is ahead of Gore by 30 points among white, married mothers in the Voter.com Battleground poll. The results are unexpected.
''The gender gap is closing,'' said Celinda Lake, the Battleground pollster who has studied the decided preference of women for the Democratic ticket in the last two presidential elections. ''The marriage gap now rivals the gender gap as a hallmark feature of Americans' voting patterns.''
Gore's people are not panicking, despite the polls and the anecdotal warnings from married voters, including many parents like Lloyd and Gerheiser. It is early, they say, adding that they believe a multimillion-dollar advertising blitz stressing Gore's good-guy biography and a clearer definition in presidential debates of his positions on family issues will narrow the gap and give the vice president the advantage he must regain with married women to beat Bush. Gore now leads among unmarried men and women, polls show.
''This is obviously a reflection of what the president went through last year. There is no reason why marriage alone should have this effect, except that the president wasn't an ideal married man,'' said a senior Gore adviser who did not want to be identified. ''The fact that married people are appalled doesn't have anything to do with Gore per se, but there is this sort of pox on both your houses, a leftover `yuck' factor.''
His personal family values and the country's prosperity notwithstanding, Gore is apparently being found guilty by association with a president who, while he retains broad national popularity, is viewed by many parents in particular as a man who coarsened a culture that already assaults their children, and set a tawdry moral example. It is not that married people expect magic from Bush, but many hope a new broom will sweep clean.
''Despite the good economic news and general social optimism, the one thing people remain pessimistic about is how things are going with children,'' said Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, an Amherst author who studies marriage trends. ''Baby boomers, no matter how libertarian they once were, have a sense that with the sex, drugs, violence, and lack of strong adult role models, this is not a very good environment for raising children.''
By portraying GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole as a bit of an old crank out of touch with soccer moms and dads, Clinton and Gore kept the marriage gap small in 1996. But Bush, who talks the modern-man talk of nurturing his twin daughters, respecting his wife, and inheriting his parents' values, has baby-boomer credentials that rival Gore's, plus a nonthreatening ''compassionate conservative'' approach and an agenda crafted to be family-friendly.
Hardly a week goes by that Bush does not attend at least one education-related event (at a private, religious school in Detroit last week, he talked for an hour about character education), and his plan to let younger workers manage and invest a portion of their Social Security taxes is aimed, he says, at building wealth that parents can pass on to children.
''Bush is eating into the Democrats' usual advantage with women by talking about issues they care about,'' said Anna Greenberg, a visiting scholar at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard who analyzes gender and voting. ''It's smart. He gets it, like other Republican candidates haven't.''
But playing the gender card can be tricky because positions a candidate might take to woo a woman voter, such as favoring gun control, could well alienate a man. Many analysts, including Greenberg, say the gender gap is the consequence of the Democrats' success, since the 1960s, in appealing to women's concerns, an effort that helped send many men fleeing to the GOP. Dole beat Clinton by 11 points among white men in 1996. A Washington Post-ABC News poll this month showed Bush leading Gore 58 percent to 35 percent among white men.
But a candidate's personality counts, too, and that is another problem for Gore, particularly among men. In a recent Pew Research Center poll, men called Bush funnier and more interesting, honest, inspiring, and charismatic than Gore.
''A lot of men see Gore as the kid who always had his hand up in school, sort of the Eddie Haskell `I want to please' image,'' said Pew poll director Andrew Kohut, referring to the unctuous teenager on ''Leave It To Beaver.'' ''Those things really rub men the wrong way.''
Scott Brown, interviewed while touring Mount Vernon with his wife, Susan, is a little put off by Bush's ''born with the silver spoon in his mouth'' breeding. But, said the Kansas farmer and father of three, ''Bush is still the kind of guy you could walk up to and have a nice visit with.'' He thinks Gore is a ''phony'' who hedged ''when he should have stood up and said flat out that the things Clinton did weren't right.''
''Al Gore looks soft, like a pushover,'' added Jeffrey Lloyd, the Odenton, Md., bus driver. ''Now, there are a lot of people who are attracted to the soft approach in politics, but it's not what's best for the country.''
Perceptions can become reality in politics, and Gore's earth-toned wardrobe (recommended by his feminist adviser, Naomi Wolf), the way he wears a Palm Pilot minicomputer on the basketball court, and casting himself (erroneously) as the hero of the book ''Love Story'' have not helped counter Bush's more macho image as a onetime, hard-drinking frat man who has a ranch in west Texas and used to own a piece of a baseball team.
University of Virginia sociologist Steven L. Nock, who has written about the relationship between marriage and masculinity, said he is not surprised that Gore is unpopular with many married men. ''Less forceful, less aggressive, less assertive - that would not appeal to married men,'' Nock said. He said Gore comes across as a weak person, ''someone who doesn't take strong positions and basically is not a very masculine guy.''
There is an effort underway in the Gore campaign to highlight Gore's record as a veteran who served in Vietnam (unlike Bush) and as a tough-minded investigative reporter. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Gore's advisers recently convened a focus group of women to determine which candidate they would prefer to date. (Gore won, because he would be a better listener and less likely than Bush to chew gum and honk the horn.) GOP pollster Frank Luntz recently asked women which candidate they would prefer to marry, and Bush got the nod for being less robotic.
Karen McSweeney, sipping coffee as she nursed her 4-month-old baby, said she finds the vice president's awkwardness attractive - compared to Bush being ''slippery and canned'' - and she thinks Gore is a ''good family guy.'' But her faith in him was shaken when Gore switched positions and said Elian Gonzalez, the 6-year-old Cuban boy, should not necessarily be returned to his father's custody.
''I was disappointed. I expected more from Gore,'' said McSweeney, who grew up in Melrose and now lives with her husband and two children in Arlington, Va. ''It seemed like something Clinton would do.''
McSweeney said she won't vote for Bush, but she might support Ralph Nader, who got her vote in 1996 because, she said, ''I didn't think Clinton's values were in the right place.''
