Dialogue: Leader or friend, it's a 50:50 call

Right after Al Gore had voted for himself on Wednesday, CNN followed him to nearby Forks River School where he spoke to the children.

The wonderful thing about their system of government, he told them, was the ability to vote for anyone they wanted.

"What sort of person would you vote for?" he asked a boy sitting at his feet.

"My friend," replied the boy.

"Haw, haw, haw," went Gore, walking away in delight at the things kids come out with.

I don't think it crossed his mind that the kid had just told him something that explained his fate better than anything we heard or read during the campaign, or were to hear on television during the long night of the count.

People do vote for a friend if they can. Otherwise, they want somebody who could be their friend if he moved next door or joined the golf club or came to work at the firm.

They would prefer a leader who is competent and diligent, too. But when they haven't got a Clinton and have to make a choice between a candidate of clearly superior ability and one far more likeable, well, it's an even split.

It shouldn't have been. A slightly more personable character with a booming economy working for him would not now be worrying about a few thousand postal votes in Florida.

Gore has been preparing for the presidency since he was no older than the kid at Forks River. His father had been sent to the Senate from Tennessee when Al was a boy. Growing up, Albert jun ingested Washington with his milk.

His parents included him in their political circle and he turned out to be intelligent, presentable, polite and, no doubt, comfortable in adult company. There was never much doubt that he would inherit his father's seat.

But did he have any friends?

In 1992, I took a United States Government-sponsored tour of some of the presidential primaries. There was a feeling among Democrats at that time that they had missed a bus.

By then the primaries had virtually settled the candidacy on the curly head of a boyish southern Governor named Bill Clinton. He didn't really look the part and had already turned out to have the "zipper problem."

The party and the press did not know then that there was to be an upside to that problem - it made the President so ignominiously human that his popularity soared while the Republicans were impeaching him.

Gore never understood that. He was so afraid of the messy business that he would not let Clinton near his own presidential campaign. The public noticed. What kind of friend was he?

Back in 1992, Democrats contemplating Clinton would ruefully explain that the candidate was supposed to have been Senator Gore, a name they would utter with awe.

But what with one thing and another - a bereavement in his family, a feeling that after the Gulf War George Bush was invincible - Gore had hesitated through 1991.

By October, when it was almost too late to mount a campaign, it was clear he would not run. It was only then that Clinton entered the field.

In the light of this week's election it can be wondered how different the 1990s might have been had Gore seized his moment. That is not to suggest he would have been president eight years ago. Quite the reverse. If he could not bury a rival as cheerfully limited as George W. Bush, it must be doubtful now that he could have beaten George W.'s dad.

There might be comfort at the rising of the son to recall how good President Bush was. There might be something in the genes.

Back on August 9 we ought to have had a parade or something. It was the 10th anniversary of the day George Bush announced that Iraq's takeover of Kuwait could not be tolerated. If that seems an obvious decision now, it was not obvious for nearly a week after the August 3 invasion.

The Berlin Wall had fallen the previous year, the West was in a euphoria of peace. Disputes between neighbours no longer gave the superpowers an excuse for a round of geopolitical arm-wrestling.

Saddam Hussein calculated that Western powers would lack the will to resist him and for a sickening few days it seemed he could be right.

His claim to Kuwait was immediately accepted by a dismaying number of people in this country and others. Any punishment for his resort to force should be limited, they argued, to United Nations trade sanctions.

Fortunately Bush and Margaret Thatcher were clear-headed. The military operation was a model of sensible warfare. It went with a set of realistic objectives and overwhelming firepower, and it was withdrawn once Kuwait had been restored.

But it did more than that. It demonstrated that the sole remaining superpower was prepared to enforce international law when its national interests were not vitally affected.

Clinton has extended that principle to intervene within states where, for example, civil disorder or ethnic conflict threatens genocide. Gore would do the same; Bush is not so sure.

With that friendly, folksy style of politics Dubya could do as much, or as little, as he likes. It has taken him a long way in a short time. Those who lack it, no matter how smart they may be, are probably destined to lose.