AMBRIDGE - She was being introduced as a woman now facing the ''greatest challenge'' of helping her husband become the next president.
Just then - with the July sun gleaming on Tipper Gore's plum pantsuit, in a garden full of Democrats invited to this luncheon fund-raiser by New Republic owner Martin Peretz and his wife, Anne - a beeper went off.
Distracted by the sound, her eyes darted about the lush lawn, the talk of Al Gore as the next president not enough to keep her attention.
Apparently, it isn't.
The Gores have four children. Three of them, she notes sharply, are ''not Karenna,'' the couple's oldest daughter who has become a lightning rod in her father's campaign and whose short list of accomplishments includes moving the headquarters from Washington to Nashville and dressing Dad in earth tones (on the advice of her friend feminist author Naomi Wolf).
She also has a grandson - Karenna's 1-year-old, Wyatt - and an elderly mother who lives in the vice presidential home. Then, there's Al's mother, Pauline Gore, approaching 90 and still attached to the family farm in Tennessee, where she needs constant care.
''The campaign is something that's happening in my life right now,'' Tipper Gore said in an interview Friday over tea and cookies in the Peretzes' art-filled living room. ''The campaign is not my life.''
She seems to mean it. She looks you in the eye, taps your hand for emphasis, and directs the photographer to the best spot of light in the room for taking her picture, because, you see, Tipper is a serious photographer, with some of her work included in an exhibit on homelessness that will open at the Los Angeles Public Library during the Democratic convention in LA next month. She uses a Nikon. And hates digital processing.
Without saying it in a way that might insult the campaign, this is how Tipper makes it clear that she has her own identity. That her other interests are kept separate from the politics, even as the pundits are proclaiming she could be her husband's greatest asset by connecting with voters on the campaign trail - if only she'd seek the limelight more.
Especially because women will decide the outcome of the 2000 election. Especially because Karenna, 26, is one of the flash points of the turmoil within Al Gore's campaign, now under its third leadership team since chairman Tony Coelho (number two) stepped down last month, replaced by William Daley, who was secretary of commerce.
So instead of holding rallies on, say, the importance of choosing Supreme Court justices who will uphold abortion rights, Tipper spent some of last Friday under a pink tent at the Peretzes', whom the Gores have known since Al took a class from Martin Peretz as an undergraduate at Harvard 35 years ago.
''I support my husband and I love him ... but that's not - I sound like Lily Tomlin - all of me. ... We are a living family. Evolving. We're big,'' she said simply. ''At the same time, each of us has our lives to live. I'm not the person who's running.''
Unlike her husband, she's surprisingly unguarded, and her answers, particularly to political questions, often meander to other subjects. And she is no stranger to the artful dodge, especially when the names Hillary Clinton or Laura Bush, her fellow potential first lady, are brought up.
Still, Tipper Gore comes off as a warm, approachable person, with people skills that are somewhat akin to Bill Clinton's, but with a softer handshake and public voice. And she shares his love for music.
Tucked in her purse was a harmonica that her saxophone-playing daughter, Sarah, presented to her as a Christmas gift because it's portable. Her full set of Pearl drums - along with some congas and bongos - don't travel much, but she gets around with them, having played with the Grateful Dead and, most recently, in April, at Washington's RFK Stadium ''in front of 43,000 people!'' with Melissa Etheridge, among others.
''We just feel like we're regular people in extraordinary circumstances,'' she says, yet she concertedly avoids follow-up questions that pertain to the campaign, and her life after the election. Drumming, it seems, is what Tipper wants to talk about, and the subject brings her to the edge of her chair.
Music, she says, helps people find their voice. Proudly, she recalls how she taught herself to play the drums at age 12, when an ad hoc group of musical friends needed someone to keep time. Fortunately, she notes, her mother allowed the noisy pursuit, which her own son, Albert III, 17, has also embraced.
Last year, she played drums on an original CD single called ''When the Ball Drops,'' a cheeky teenage ditty about finding the right person to kiss on New Year's Eve. The campaigner in her laughs, just thinking about the frivolity of the subject.
Despite having experienced elections before, Tipper Gore won't talk about November and what she and her husband will do, win or lose, because ''it's superstitious.''
''I don't have daydreams about living in the White House,'' she says softly. ''That would be unhealthy.''
