Gore, in N.H., calls for trial's end

By Scot Lehigh, Globe Staff, February 4, 1999

NASHUA -- It is time for Congress to take its cue from the public on the impeachment trial of President Clinton, Vice President Al Gore said yesterday during a trip to New Hampshire.

Reacting to a New York Times/CBS News poll showing that most Americans want the trial to conclude swiftly and without the removal of the president, Gore issued one of his strongest statements yet on the matter.

"I think the country has long since come to the conclusion that all of those in Washington who have been concentrating on partisan political agendas should instead concentrate on the people's business," the vice president said in an interview with the Globe.

He added: "I sense that we are nearing an end to the long ordeal, and I certainly hope the Republican leadership in the Congress will start listening to the desires of the American people and shift their focus to what really matters most to the American people."

Although he said the Senate should "vote against the articles of impeachment and move on to the people's business," Gore declined to say whether he thought any lesser disciplinary action was appropriate.

"I'm going to leave that for the Senate," Gore said.

The vice president was clear, however, about what issues he thought Congress should focus on, including making college more affordable and improving the quality of education at all levels.

On a trip billed as official government business, but with campaign themes, Gore focused on policy while dancing delicately around most political queries.

He had little to say of House minority leader Richard A. Gephardt's decision not to run for president, saying he wanted to defer to Gephardt, who did not make his plans official until later in the day.

Some Gore supporters and aides said they hoped to gain Gephardt's support and were confident that, at the least, the minority leader would not support another candidate.

So far Gore has only one other rival for the Democratic nomination: former New Jersey senator Bill Bradley, who has formed an exploratory presidential campaign committee. Yesterday, Gore refused to speculate about a possible presidential candidacy by Massachusetts Senator John F. Kerry, who has long been mulling a run. "Whatever decision he makes, he will make a strong contribution to the future of this country," Gore said.

He was similarly circumspect about Boston's chances of beating Denver and Los Angeles in the competition to host the 2000 Democratic National Convention. Boston had "made a wonderful and strong bid," Gore said, but offered no further hints about which city he favored or felt would be chosen.

In his public events, Gore, making his 14th trip to New Hampshire since 1994, repeatedly underscored how much the Granite State economy has improved since the Clinton administration came to office.

A state that had been losing 10,000 jobs a year in 1992 is now adding 12,000 each year, said Gore.

New Hampshire's boom in high-tech jobs, with their demand for skilled workers, is one reason why lifelong learning opportunities are so important, Gore emphasized in stops at New Hampshire Community Technical College in Nashua and PC Connection, a skyrocketing computer sales company in Merrimack.

So do the issues the vice president touted in yesterday's tightly focused trip offer an intellectual framework for a Gore 2000 campaign? Aides said yes. But Gore was characteristically cautious.

"The past is always prologue, so in that sense whatever we are doing that is successful in New Hampshire should be taken as a framework for future progress in New Hampshire," he said. "But I don't want to put it in a political context because it is still 1999 and the election is in 2000."