RLANDO, Fla. - This was Vice President Al Gore's crowd. Thousands of senior citizens, a group that most strongly supports Gore, cheered loudly as he dished out the usual pledges made by presidential candidates in Florida: to protect Social Security, to beef up Medicare, to provide prescription drug coverage.
But among the crowd at the AARP convention this week were people such as Janet Mayhew, 69, who seemed to crystallize a concern enveloping the Gore campaign. ''To me, Gore hasn't got a platform. He has not said what he would do,'' she said.
Such reaction chills the Gore campaign, which has spent more than a year distributing position papers on nearly every imaginable topic but now finds itself trailing Republican George W. Bush in national polls. Clearly, Gore does have a platform, but it is perceived by many voters as a status-quo, preserve-the-prosperity campaign - and the vice president is finding that may not be enough to win.
After running in 1992 with Bill Clinton on the theme of ''It's the economy, stupid,'' Gore can fairly claim to have been part of the administration that helped right the economy. But, to rephrase a 1992 campaign theme song, he can hardly hope to win by telling voters, ''Don't stop thinking about yesterday.''
So Gore, who with Clinton lived through the searing setbacks to some big policy dreams - including universal health care and key environmental proposals - is running a campaign based much more on incremental notions. Gore wants to preserve Social Security instead of radically changing it as Bush proposes; he wants better health care for children before considering how to enact universal coverage; and he has abandoned a proposal he once backed to increase the gas tax 50 cents a gallon as a way of cutting pollution.
The making of Gore's campaign strategy became evident 18 months ago, when the vice president first suggested his slogan would be ''practical idealism.'' Since then, Gore has put forward what he believes is a realistic, if less audacious, agenda, while vowing not to take ''risky'' steps that could upset the prosperity.
''In many respects, it may not be a time for big, bold deviations because you can't argue with success,'' said Roy Neel, the vice president's former chief of staff and now an informal adviser. ''It is up to Bush to sell big, bold programs. He is the challenger; he is the one who wants to change horses. The attraction of the vice president's positions is that they are solid, level-headed.''
Gore spokesman Chris Lehane, when asked why the vice president has not put out a more expansive series of proposals, responded with a single word: ''Experience.'' Lehane said Gore would unveil plenty of new and innovative proposals, but there is no plan for a dramatic strategic shift. Instead, he said, the campaign is confident that the election can be won with a ''responsible vs. irresponsible'' strategy, with Bush cast as the irresponsible candidate.
But some wonder whether such a strategy is playing into Bush's hand. Yes, Bush's plans to partly privatize Social Security and to enact big tax cuts are controversial, but they have also become the major focus of the campaign. Instead of being a debate about maintaining prosperity, as some within the Gore campaign had hoped, the presidential election is being waged to a significant degree on Bush's issues.
Political analyst Stuart Rothenberg said Gore's problem is that the public has a solidly established and somewhat negative perception of the vice president. It may be too late to change that perception, so Gore may believe his best hope of winning is to attack Bush as unworthy of the presidency. After all, that is similar to the strategy Bush's father used against Michael Dukakis to win the 1988 election.
Still, Rothenberg said, such a strategy could backfire on Gore.
''I think Gore is in trouble,'' he said. ''The public sees Gore as a politician rather than a vehicle for change. So he has to make Bush the issue. He does need to rough Bush up, but the longer he stays negative, the more the public will discount future attacks.''
The Gore strategy was on vivid display Wednesday at the national convention of the AARP, the nation's best-known senior citizens lobby. Gore spent much of his speech attacking Bush's plan to allow younger workers to put an unspecified portion of their Social Security taxes into private investment accounts.
''We could say that's the end of Social Security as we know it,'' Gore said, warning that Bush wanted to ''take the security out of Social Security.''
Many AARP members shared Gore's doubts, but there was also some friendly advice for him.
''If you are a good salesman, you sell your product, you don't just knock the other guy's product,'' said Lois Tupa of Jacksonville, Fla., who attended the AARP speech and who expects to support Gore.
Gore has said he is wary of making grand promises that have little or no chance of congressional approval. While that may come across as less than visionary to some voters, Gore contends that his approach will be more credible in the long run.
''We have made tremendous progress, but the progress should be seen not as goals achieved but progress made,'' Gore said in an interview aboard Air Force Two late last year. ''Not as work completed, but a foundation laid for further progress.''
During the primaries, Gore's cautious approach initially drew some criticism within the Democratic Party, especially when compared to the way former senator Bill Bradley was drawing support for his bold proposal for universal health care. But Gore won the primaries by tearing apart the Bradley plan as too risky, and the vice president is repeating that strategy as he warns voters about Bush's tax cut and Social Security plans.
Publicly, Gore aides insist that all is well. But privately, some said the campaign has made serious mistakes since wrapping up the nomination. They noted that Gore for weeks did not have a news conference, souring his relationship with the news media, and that he has spent too much time attacking Bush instead of promoting his agenda. The aides also said Gore was hurt by the perception that he was pandering to Cuban-Americans on the Elian Gonzalez case by saying it should be resolved in family court.
In recognition of these and other problems, the campaign on June 1 will have a new deputy campaign manager for communications, Mark Fabiani, a former special counsel to Clinton. Fabiani, who earned plaudits for his defense of Clinton during the Whitewater and campaign finance investigations, is being touted as the message maven, with responsibility for overseeing all press relations and public statements.
A senior Democratic official, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that there is ''a lot of hand-wringing within the party about Gore's approach.''
''The challenge for Gore is that he seems energetic and packed with ideas, but those are mostly modest and uncontroversial policy initiatives,'' the official said.
In theory, that strategy should have been most effective at the AARP meeting. But the real message from the event may have come just after Gore left the podium. The convention hall remained packed with several thousand people awaiting the next speaker, Louis Rukeyser, the host of PBS-TV's ''Wall Street Week.''
First, Rukeyser told a series of Clinton jokes and went on to suggest that the Gore-Bush campaign will be a bore. But the crowd, supposedly dominated by Democratic loyalists, hardly seemed offended. After all, notwithstanding Gore's dire warnings about the dangers of investing, they wanted to hear Rukeyser's advice for getting rich in the stock market.
