It all should have been so simple for Gore

RUPERT CORNWELL wonders how the Vice-President could have blown the election.

WASHINGTON - Long after the great chad furore has abated; long after the lawyers' antics; the power-hairdressing of Katherine Harris and the endless, wearying uncertainties of the aftermath have been forgotten, one question about Election 2000 will haunt Al Gore to the end of his days: Just how did he fail to win on November 7?

There are tough elections and easy ones, and this one, on paper, should have been one of the easiest. A sitting Vice-President, an incumbent who has co-presided over the longest and still continuing boom in post-war American history, a man who by common consent is as qualified for the White House as any candidate in recent memory - simply should not be beaten by an upstart and untested state Governor, even one with the undeniable personal charm and family connections of George W. Bush.

The entire wrenching postscript in Florida would have been almost irrelevant had he managed to carry even one of a handful of states which should have been part of his birthright.

In the event, Gore fell short by the narrowest conceivable margin, taking 267 of the 270 votes he needed for an electoral college win. Victory in just one more state, even a state with the smallest possible prize of three votes, would have reversed the result.

But Gore failed even to carry his home turf, Tennessee, a misfortune that has befallen no White House candidate since George McGovern surrendered South Dakota to Richard Nixon in 1972.

He failed to carry President Bill Clinton's Arkansas; he lost New Hampshire, the Republican stronghold where Clinton managed to win convincingly in the 1996 elections; more stunningly, Gore lost working-class, poor and traditionally Democratic West Virginia, which even as unappealing a Democrat as Michael Dukakis won in 1988. Had Gore captured any of the above, the whole Florida circus would have never happened.

The truth was that, until perhaps the very last days, Gore ran a terrible campaign. "I am my own man," he declared at the Los Angeles nominating convention, in a bid to disassociate himself from Clinton and the politics of scandal. But which man?

Never did Gore make clear to the public who, or just what exactly, he really was. He was neither unabashed Washington insider nor native Tennessean.

Midway in the campaign, in an attempt to put down roots, he switched his campaign headquarters from Washington DC to Nashville; but the move was half-hearted and never entirely completed. Gore would don jeans and open-neck shirts and let his accent widen to a slow southern drawl. But the words which emerged were those of the policy expert.

The attempt to achieve the split with Clinton sacrificed Gore's prime asset, of continuity: why change a winning team?

But even without the Clinton baggage, Gore's limitations as a politician had been cruelly exposed. Never did he really connect with voters until the closing stages of the campaign, as Gore re-invented himself a last time, as the outsider committed to fighting for the less privileged.

For the rest it was the wooden, seemingly humourless, condescending Gore of always - and never more so than in the first, and most important, of the three presidential debates.

The debates were where Gore was supposed to put away the lightweight and rather foolish Bush. In fact, by coming across as the nice guy fending off the arrogant bully, Bush won on impressions, if not on substance.

Most of the time, Gore seemed programmed by his advisers. Despite that promise in Los Angeles, he rarely uttered a word that sounded entirely his own.

As of now, he is Democratic heir presumptive for the 2004 presidential election.

In 1970, Gore saw his father, Senator Albert Gore sen of Tennessee, lose his seat. Gore sen told his constituents: "The causes for which we fought are not dead. The truth shall rise again."

He asked his 22-year-old son what he would do if he had been rejected by the same voters he had served for 32 years. Gore told his father: "Dad, I would take the 32 years."

Six years afterwards, Gore jun was elected to the House of Representatives, continuing a family cycle which was meant to culminate in the presidency.

It will be the dashing of those hopes, as much as the pain of losing, which will have been preying on Gore's mind.

- HERALD CORRESPONDENT

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