Al Gore was supposed to be a bore. He isn’t. He cracks genuinely funny jokes about his reputation for stiffness. He connects on the issues. In a larger sense, he is trying to take a system known for its safety-net compassion–namely big government–and convince a doubting world that it can be efficient.
Where Bob Dole and Bill Clinton are middle-of-the-road plaid processcrats, Kemp and Gore are seriously obsessed with green–optimistic economics for Kemp, apocalyptic environmentalism for Gore. This week we’re probably getting a sneak preview of the first presidential campaign of the 21st century.
Kemp still occasionally slips back into econspeak, but he is an infinitely better candidate than he was when he ran–and got crushed–in 1988. Men respond to the football player; women to the chatty openness. ““Did you think anyone could get this excited at 9:30 in the morning about capitalism?’’ he asked some enthused college students in Connecticut last week. The Amwayesque pitch works because Kemp (in contrast to Dole) so obviously believes what he’s saying, even when it’s hooey.
If Kemp is possessed, Gore is self-possessed, almost to a fault. He’s Clinton without the Elvis, a man who still doesn’t quite know how to clap his hands to music. But he’s also Clinton without the baggage, which makes him especially formidable.
Kemp may be a candidate for Ritalin, but his great gift this year is to take politics back toward the high road. Even when he goes on the offensive, he manages to do so in a generous, charming spirit. His standard speech ends with a motivational quote that Joanne Kemp stuck to their refrigerator: ““Problems are nothing but opportunities brilliantly disguised as insurmountable barriers.’’ Kemp’s zeal to heal partisan wounds and cut the sniping extends even to the pariahs in the press. When he mentioned ABC News in passing to GOP activists in Orlando, the crowd booed. ““You don’t boo at a Kemp rally,’’ Kemp said sternly. ““Our enemy is not people, it’s stupid ideas.''
Speaking of which… Kemp obviously loves the 15 percent tax-cut idea, but he doesn’t trust the people enough to explain how a Dole administration would pay for it. By the GOP’s own numbers (which grossly understate the shortfall), $110 billion in discretionary spending would have to be cut. I asked Kemp how. ““You will not get that out of me,’’ he said flatly. Until that question gets answered, the Dole-Kemp campaign remains intellectually dishonest. When Kemp says ““I pledge to you, we won’t leave a single soul behind,’’ it sounds refreshingly compassionate coming from a Republican. But finding the money for $550 billion in tax cuts that go disproportionately to the wealthy will leave plenty of souls behind, and he knows it. More likely, Kemp simply doesn’t care about the deficit, which he once called a ““bugaboo.’’ Asked about former senator Warren Rudman, a cochair of Dole’s campaign, Kemp said: ““He’s a pessimistic bean-counter, a CPA. Too many Republicans have green eyeshades.''
Gore relishes wearing those eyeshades. He explains that under his reinventing-government initiative (known as REGO, or, as he puts it, ““GORE sideways’’), 12 of 13 cabinet-level departments have been downsized. And Gore points with pride to a Kemp idea that the Democrats have put in place in 15 inner cities: ““empowerment zones’’ where many taxes are waived. The difference between the two is that Gore is more cautious about the prospects. ““When we prove it works, it can be expanded,’’ Gore says. Kemp would do it everywhere–right now.
Gore got off easy after the Democratic convention. As part of his emotional speech about his sister’s death from lung cancer, he had recounted vowing at her bedside to work against tobacco marketing to children until ““my last breath.’’ But he neglected to mention that he had maintained his own ties to tobacco for several years afterward. How did he get away nearly unscathed by this hypocrisy? I got a clue when I asked him about accepting tobacco contributions. ““In retrospect, I should have said “I’m going to draw the line [immediately after his sister died]’,’’ he confessed. Then, before I could follow up, he volunteered, ““Worse than that, I continued to rent out a tobacco allotment [on his property in Tennessee].’’ Worse than that. He should have explained that in the speech itself, but his apologetic approach will help shut down the story. Is pre-emptive contrition the hot new damage control strategy of the ’90s?
Kemp and Gore are further proof that the words ““liberal’’ and ““conservative’’ have lost much of their meaning. Kemp dislikes Dole’s use of ““liberal’’ as an epithet, and it’s not hard to see why. Kemp habitually salutes Abraham Lincoln and Adam Smith and their free, open-minded and classically liberal approach to life. Temperamentally, Gore is far more conservative than Kemp. Before the Democrats can back major new programs, he says, ““we need a long period of sustained progress’’ to build public trust. Kemp quotes Martin Luther King on ““audacious faith.’’ Gore looks forward to the next century with the phrase ““steady as she goes.’’ Confused? Buckle up for the cleaner, more substantive, but topsy-turvy politics of the new millennium.
