ice President Al Gore's campaign stop in Boston Monday revealed what ails both the Veep's presidential campaign and our national politics.
Not a single caucus or primary vote will be cast until early next year yet here was Gore delivering ''a major policy speech on crime'' at Boston police headquarters in the middle of July.
No one plans a major political event on July 12 except a candidate twitching in desperation or anxiety. Why? Because everyone has either gone to the beach or mountains or wishes they had. It's a dead zone for campaigns.
But there was Gore, in full-dress campaign regalia, at an event cobbled together in four or five days. As a backdrop, he used the obligatory wall of blue uniformed officers, some with the scrambled-egg visor braid denoting police brass.
It wasn't supposed to be this way for Gore, darting off in pursuit of summer headlines to politically safe but electorally insignificant Massachusetts early in the campaign.
Six months ago, the VP was supposed to run a modified Rose Garden strategy and cakewalk to the Democratic nomination next year over presumably light opposition, former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley.
Two phenomena have intervened, upsetting the plan.
First, DubyahMania. Before he even left the starting gate, Texas Governor George Dubyah Bush had lapped the 10-candidate Republican presidential field and even sprinted way ahead of Gore in trial heat head-to-head polls.
Then, Gore-aphobia. Nervous about Gore's precipitous plunge in the polls, many Democrats stopped viewing his nomination as inevitable. Suddenly, Bradley, loose and exuding cerebral self-deprecation, widened his early beachheads and raced inland to turf such as Massachusetts, once thought to be Gore solid.
Flushed from his bunker, Gore is now shadowboxing, counterpunching opponents who haven't really engaged him yet. That probably explains the mixed message of his anticrime speech. There was something for everyone in this bag, meaning it was probably shaped by campaign polling data.
Veering left, Gore tried to one-up Bradley on gun control, stridently attacking the National Rifle Association and its Republican sympathizers and calling for photo gun licenses for new owners. Tacking right toward Bush, he reiterated his support for the death penalty and, in a statement certain to raise the antennae of civil libertarians, called for a ban on ''gang-related clothing'' and ''curfews on specific gang members.''
In another feint toward the right, Gore espoused the need for ''parents to instill the right values'' in their children. He also pledged, as part of the war on crime, to ''raise up our nation's faith-based organizations.'' That's a variation of an oft-repeated Bush theme.
The Gore Boston gambit is a metaphor for what's wrong with modern presidential politics and the cycle of cynicism it perpetuates.
The voting public, shrinking each presidential quadrennium, is barely attuned to this campaign. Yet it is continuously polled by candidates and media outlets, which detect profound trends in the data's demographic cross tabulations.
Even though few are listening and the poll numbers are unquestionably soft, the candidates - in this case the vice president - stage big events, espousing poll-tested themes, in an effort to generate news coverage to influence the next round of polling.
And 'round it goes, until election time when many voters, sick of the endless campaigns and unwanted politicking, stay home on Election Day.
Lobbying Grenade. Secretary of State William F. Galvin is causing some anxiety among Beacon Hill's fraternity of 600 lobbyists. In advance of tomorrow's deadline for filing mid-year accounts of salaries, Galvin has informed lobbyists and employers alike of new reporting requirements.
No longer will lobbyists be allowed to claim ''indirect lobbying'' status, meaning they are merely employees of a lobbying firm. Now, they must report the specific company on whose behalf they are working. Among those affected will be newly minted skid-greaser Charles F. Flaherty, the former House speaker, who had registered as an employee of the lobbying law firm of Donoghue, Barrett & Singal.
Others are being smoked out by a Galvin letter to employers, who assumed they were hiring heavyweight fixers but now learn these legislative agents never registered. One firm reports paying $60,000 to lobbyists who never registered.
Stay tuned for further ''amended'' reports.
