l Gore is running a ''fear campaign,'' but it's not exactly the one George W. Bush is describing. Fearful of offending any one potential voter, the vice president is afraid to take any stand that might attract many.
Consider Gore's pathetic angst over letting Bill Clinton campaign on his behalf. According to the latest headlines, Gore is willing to use a recorded message from Clinton to rally black voters.
But he remains skittish about making public appearances with the president. Does he really believe voters are too stupid to see such straddling for what it is - sheer political cowardice?
Gore's faint-heartedness when it comes to playing the Clinton card is at the heart of what is wrong with his campaign. For too long, the Democratic presidential candidate was so worried about the downside of taking a position, he never did what it takes to get the upside.
Now, in the final days of this campaign, Gore is frantically attaching himself to traditionally Democratic interest groups, like the prochoice constituency. He is fervently praying with religious leaders and hopefully hugging labor leaders.
When Democrats do that - when they start shouting hoarsely into crowds and begin counting on predictions of record black turnout, the exercise has a distinctly Michael Dukakis feel to it. It means one thing: desperation.
How amazing that eight years of economic prosperity can be lost in the mush of an unmotivating campaign, like Gore's.
The vice president wanted us to take him as his own man. And then he refused to be one. He should have spent less time pondering his wardrobe - new age khakis or aging boomer dungarees? - and more time pondering his principles, if he truly has any.
To pander to the rabid death-penalty crowd, Gore won't point out his opponent's overly enthusiastic record for putting people to death in Texas.
Instead, he leaves that task to intrepid interrogators like late-night comedian David Letterman.
Gore is for gun control. But because of the Bambi-slayers' vote, he backs into the issue by first assuring hunters he has no intention of taking away their precious rifles.
When it comes to education, he relies on support from the powerful teachers' unions. At the same time, he wants to sound like a reformer, so, during debates, he mouths platitudes about accountability and mandatory testing.
Worried about any taint from the Hillary health-care debacle during the first Clinton term, he backs away from the concept of universal health care. He favors something ''incremental.''
And, of course, Gore is for campaign finance reform. If elected, it's the first thing he'll tackle, after he cashes all the soft money checks he collected from big corporate interests.
His is partly the dilemma of the ''New Democrat'' - those poll and focus-group driven creatures who seek votes from the powerful, even as they try to hold onto their inheritance from the old Democratic Party, the powerless.
With Gore, the New Democrats' dilemma is complicated by an old political reality - if voters are confused about where a candidate stands, they are freer to vote on the basis of personality rather than policy. To put it another way, if they perceive Gore and Bush stand basically for the same thing, they will vote for the candidate they like more. And that is Bush.
Clinton was the master of compromising away his Democratic credentials to appeal to the center, but he had the charisma to get away with it. The president still has the charisma, and his baggage doesn't affect Gore's base in the slightest.
Those voters who are morally outraged by Clinton's dalliance with Monica Lewinsky are already with Bush. The recent American encounter with impeachment proved that most people were able to separate Clinton's personal behavior - which they didn't like - from his politics - which they did.
Now is the time for Gore to remind people of those politics and the economic progress they engendered. Instead of trying to look and sound as much like Bush, he should emphasize the differences. If he doesn't have the guts to do it now, he won't be able to show them later: No guts, no glory, no White House.
Indeed, it could be that Gore's only real hope of winning election lies in another kind of fear - the voters' last-minute fear of actually sending Bush to Washington.
Joan Vennochi's e-mail address is vennochi@globe.com.
