THOMAS OLIPHANT

Tipper Gore hits all the right marks in Dartmouth visit

By Thomas Oliphant, Globe Staff, January 18, 1999

Tipper Gore last week deftly tossed a dart into the bull's-eye of a whopper of a national issue -- health care and opportunity for the mentally ill.

No surprise there for the millions of Americans with deeply personal reasons for following this topic. The vice president's spouse has been a national leader on the issue for years and the Clinton administration's most important in-house fighter.

But Tipper Gore's dart also announced her presence in New Hampshire at the outset of this pre-presidential year and made the powerful point that Hillary Rodham Clinton is not unique but the pathfinder in a new era.

Since timing is everything in policy and politics, Mrs. Gore's emergence coincided with a period of increased activity and visibility by her husband. Al Gore and Bill Clinton, still crazy after all these years, are at it again, previewing a slew of policy initiatives on everything from suburban sprawl to community policing, whose positive reception clashes with the myopia of impeachment-fixated Washington.

And as if that weren't enough, the activity coincides with two important shifts in the pre-presidential landscape -- the thinning of the Democratic Party field in a way that underlines the vice president's current strength and the return to earth of the Republican front-runner whom nobody knows, Texas Governor George W. Bush.

Few have noticed, but in the last few months, Gore has ceased being the double-digit trailer in national polls and now runs even with Bush, who does no better than another untested, not-yet-candidate, Elizabeth Dole. And one poll from New Hampshire even had Dole the Spouse even with Bush the Son among Republicans.

The early politics is interesting, but what Tipper Gore showed last week is how naturally the Gores can blend it with substance, which after all is how real things happen in this country.

At Dartmouth last week, she was once again the Clinton administration's mental health policy spokesman, unveiling its initiatives for the year. They are each breakthroughs:

- The first-ever White House conference on mental health, which will bring together all the varied segments of a large community this spring to assess the current state of science, treatment, and services and to plot the future. These gatherings are often the catalytic precursors of major change as the Clintons' work on early childhood development and Social Security reform has already demonstrated.

- A presidential directive to the huge federal personnel system to come up with ways to increase job opportunities for the mentally ill, most of whom are desparate for the chance to work. Currently, the rules give the special opportunities to the physically disabled and the retarded.

- A huge proposed increase in the basic federal program that funds services for the mentally ill that are delivered through state governments. Over the last five years, largely thanks to Mrs. Gore's in-house battling, the efficient use of roughly 15 percent more money has shown how much more can be done. For next year, she said the administration wants a 24 percent increase in the basic block grant to nearly $360 million, the largest spike in federal aid ever requested.

As Mrs. Gore put it in her speech at Dartmouth, these initiatives are aimed at a "vicious cycle" that has always characterized mental health policy.

At its core is the disparity in treatment of and attitudes toward the mentally as opposed to the physically ill. In the face of science's contribution to our understanding of the biochemical component of mental illness, even the disparate terms are absurd.

For that reason, as Mrs. Gore knows, the great goal of the mental health community is nothing more, and nothing less, than parity across the board. Dealing with that challenge squarely, as she also knows, will be her next big challenge.

As with the physically disabled, mental health is a widely organized world. That makes the political as well as the policy implications of her work obvious. But it is also a demanding world, and properly so. Mrs. Gore, and therefore the vice president, will get a major boost from this world in the months ahead, precisely because her record and her credentials are so soundly established.

And that, in turn, is the key to understanding the current strength of Al Gore's looming candidacy, nationally and in New Hampshire.

A decade ago, another vice president (George W. Bush's father) made it all the way in a purely succession election. Because of his much more passive role, he had to face near-death experiences in the early primaries against Bob Dole and well into the fall against Mike Dukakis.

There are no certainties in this game, but Gore's attempt is much more solidly grounded in his record as well as his political organization. And the extra dimension was on vivid display last week in New Hampshire in the person of Tipper Gore.