OVER, N.H. -- Vice President Al Gore feels very strongly -- about a lot of things.
In recent weeks, as he worked to overhaul his campaign and remake himself as a candidate, Gore has been trying to ensure that voters realize that he's more than a cardboard-cutout-shadow-of-a-president.
''I feel very strongly about this,'' he says many times each day. ''I feel passionately about these issues,'' is another refrain.
Somewhere, between the old Vice President Gore and the new Candidate Gore, was a discovery that people didn't necessarily know how he felt or if he cared. Fading poll figures in New Hampshire caused him to find a new approach. So did Bill Bradley, who was claiming issues like race and poverty and campaign finance reform that Gore has long championed over the course of his political career.
Now, Gore is making sure people know what turns him on by rhetorically underlining his sentences. Peppered throughout his stump speeches and his answers to voters' questions are the verbal cues.
''I want to tell you a little bit about what's in my heart this evening and why I feel as strongly as I do,'' Gore said Saturday night at the Hellenic Center here for the Strafford County Democratic dinner.
In Hanover last week, he also said he felt ''very strongly'' about campaign finance reform. He said it is time for gays and lesbians to be recognized with dignity: ''It's a moral issue and I feel very strongly about it.''
On mental health benefits receiving parity with other health benefits, Gore said he guaranteed his commitment to the cause. ''I feel very strongly about it,'' he said. ''This is one I will fix for you.''
And on the environment, Gore reminded the audience at Dartmouth College that he is no stranger to the green movement. ''I feel very strongly about it,'' he said. ''I wrote a book about it, I made speeches about it for 20 years.''
In an interview yesterday during a drive from Merrimack to Manchester, Gore said the words and phrases are not a conscious addition to his vocabulary.
''It's not because I feel a need to tell them, it's because I've shifted gears to get rid of the vice presidential habits that I got into over seven years of trying to make sure that I advocated policies that would help the administration move the ball down the field for the president,'' he said.
The result of his vice presidential verbal restraint, he believes, was his stilted reputation as a wooden or inauthentic figure. Now, instead of pausing to think for a second about what he is about to say, Gore said he's letting loose and telling people what he's feeling.
''If that means I say something that's at odds with the administration policy, fine,'' he said. ''It's more important to have a clear line of communication.
''That means I'm going to naturally say from time to time, `I feel strongly about this or I feel passionately about that,''' said Gore. ''It's just an outgrowth of that shift from being a vice president to being a presidential candidate.''
In Dover, as he told the story of his mother and father and how they first met, Gore mentioned that his father, a former senator and congressman, was the first commissioner of labor in Tennessee.
''One of the other commitments that I make is I am pro-union, pro-organized labor, pro-collective bargaining,'' he said. ''I feel very strongly about this.''
Gore continued to talk about his father's career, noting that he was against the poll tax in the 1940s, for civil rights in the 1950s, and backed the Civil Rights Act in 1965.
''Well, I make this pledge in his honor,'' Gore said. ''The progress we've made on civil rights in this century is only the beginning of what we're going to make in the 21st century.''
Gore said he could not understand how anyone could say that hate crimes are no different from other crimes.
''Hate crimes are intended to stigmatize and dehumanize and put fear in the hearts of a whole group of people and I believe it's time to pass a national hate crimes law,'' Gore said.
And then, he concluded, ''I feel passionately about these issues.''
