-Caveat Lector- http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/20/politics/20VICE.html The New York Times October 20, 2000 Al Gore's Journey: Once Close to Clinton, Gore Keeps a Distance By MELINDA HENNEBERGER and DON VAN NATTA Jr. (AFP) Vice President Al Gore is keeping his distance from President Clinton, to what is said to be the puzzlement and consternation of the president. The photo above was taken during a White House ceremony in 1998. --- Al Gore's Journey Uneasy Alliance This is the 17th article of a series about the lives of the presidential candidates. Future installments will look at Al Gore and religion and George W. Bush's decision to seek the presidency. --- Paul Hosefros/ The New York Times Since the Clintons and Gores last appeared together on Aug. 15, at a ``torch-passing'' rally in Monroe, Mich., Mr. Gore has spoken with the president only a few times. fter eight years together, here is the state of the relationship between President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore: Mr. Gore won't pick up the phone. He doesn't call, and Mr. Clinton doesn't know why. Until the recent crisis in the Middle East, the two had spoken only a handful of times since the week of this summer's Democratic convention. Mr. Clinton is both hurt by the personal rebuff and bewildered as to why his political heir won't come to him for the advice he is itching to give — advice the president feels the candidate needs, according to two friends who have discussed this with Mr. Clinton recently. After Mr. Gore's second debate with Gov. George W. Bush, the president was irate. He told one friend that the vice president was getting bad advice from consultants, especially Carter Eskew and Robert Shrum, who seemed to Mr. Clinton to have coached all the fight out of him. But when the friend said, "Why don't you just call him?" the president said he didn't feel he should meddle. The buddy movie that began when these two young Southern centrists started off on a high-energy bus tour across America in the 1992 campaign wasn't supposed to end like this. At the time, story after story about "Bill and Al's Excellent Adventure" highlighted their complementary strengths and campaign trail "double dates" with blond wives who seemed to be hitting it off famously, too. At least, that was how it looked as the two women hugged each other while jumping up and down in time with the campaign theme song, Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)." There were striking images of the running mates tossing a football around and huddled alone in the back of their bus at 2 in the morning, beat but apparently unable to stop yakking. Former Clinton aides have said that one big reason Mr. Clinton chose Mr. Gore as his running mate was that he had a lot in common with his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Paul Begala, a former aide, recalled that Mr. Clinton said when he picked Mr. Gore, " `He reminds me of Hillary in that when he gets hold of something he never lets loose.' He saw a constancy that he's been accused of lacking." But now, Mr. Clinton is left to wonder why Mr. Gore can't be more like his wife, who appeared with the vice president at a campaign event in New York yesterday. As a candidate, she does listen to his advice — and not coincidentally, in the view of several Clinton aides, seems to be doing better in her race than the vice president is in his. It took last week's outbreak of violence in the Middle East to bring Mr. Gore and Mr. Clinton together. The vice president left the campaign trail to attend White House briefings on the crisis. It was the first time Mr. Gore had set foot in the White House since a state dinner on May 22, and he seems to be going out of his way to avoid appearing with the president. His office was even reluctant to release a photo taken last week of the two of them together — and initially instructed the White House not to put it out, either. One Democratic fund-raiser who knows both men said, "It's worse than you think, worse than it was last year." Even then, things weren't so hot. On the day Mr. Gore formally declared his candidacy in June 1999, ABC News broadcast an interview with the vice president in which Mr. Gore repeatedly distanced himself from the president, voicing disappointment over Mr. Clinton's behavior with Monica S. Lewinsky, the White House intern with whom he had an affair. Mr. Clinton feels frustrated, eager to help but unwilling to insert himself where he's not wanted, say the friends who have discussed this with him. It's beyond him why Mr. Gore can't manage to relate to an audience in the way that comes so effortlessly to him. And he's convinced that Mr. Gore moved too slowly to capitalize on his successful convention performance — in the president's view, running away from him when he ought to be running on their record. Yesterday, at a meeting of the House Democratic caucus, Mr. Clinton responded to Mr. Bush's remarks in the last debate point for point and seemed to wish he had been there to make the arguments himself. "I almost gagged when I heard that answer on the patients' bill of rights in Texas," Mr. Clinton said at one point — Mr. Bush's answer, of course. Yet there is no plan for Mr. Clinton to campaign with Mr. Gore, although he will be stumping for him and other Democrats, said Mr. Gore's press secretary, Chris Lehane. "This is something Gore is going to do on his own," Mr. Lehane said. And that is what has Mr. Clinton worried. He is concerned that a loss would reflect poorly on him, and aware, too, that he is responsible for some of Mr. Gore's problems. Yet the president also believes that he has left Mr. Gore a rich legacy, in both policy and political terms, and that Mr. Gore seems to be squandering it. Gore aides, however, see the distance as a must. "He said at the convention, `I am my own man, vote for me.' That's real," said Mark Fabiani, the deputy campaign manager. "It's not some kind of facade where behind it he's seeking Clinton's counsel every day." The president does speak regularly with Mr. Gore's staff, as does the White House chief of staff, John Podesta, and his deputy Steve Ricchetti. Through them, the president stays well briefed on campaign developments. And sometimes, he cannot resist offering a suggestion. Mr. Clinton called Mr. Eskew, Mr. Gore's top strategist, a couple of weeks ago to tell him he ought to make the vice president watch a skit about the first debate on NBC's "Saturday Night Live," in which Mr. Gore was depicted as overbearing and orange. "He called me and said, `You've got to show it to him,' " Mr. Eskew said. When they did, though, Mr. Gore, who does some pretty scathing imitations himself, turned into a critic, too. Sizing up Darrell Hammond, the actor who played him in the skit, Mr. Eskew said, "he said, `He's got me in some ways, but I could help him in some places.' " A couple of times a week, the president speaks with William M. Daley, the Gore campaign chairman who was Mr. Clinton's former commerce secretary. Mr. Daley said that Mr. Clinton's questions about campaign strategy usually concerned "big picture" matters like television ads. "He will say, `Are you up on the air in this place? How do you see West Virginia?' or some other state," said Mr. Daley. Still, he said, if Mr. Clinton was unhappy with the vice president, he hadn't heard about it. "I haven't sensed it at all. He understands he's out there doing this stuff 20 hours a day; he's done it himself." Several of Mr. Gore's friends, however, not only acknowledged the chill but said the vice president's relationship with Mr. Clinton never fully recovered from the scandal, because he felt betrayed by the lies, compromised by the recklessness and upset by the behavior, particularly as the father of young women near Ms. Lewinsky's age. An Overstated Friendship The idea that the two men were ever personal friends seems to have been mostly hype to begin with. Mr. Gore is introverted by nature, highly rational in his decision-making, someone who spends virtually all his free time with his family. He is a man who has been heavily influenced by the women in his life — his mother, his wife, his daughters — but also by a rich, difficult and defining relationship with his father, the senator. What bonding there was between him and Mr. Clinton — an extroverted, instinctive, guy's guy who never knew his own father — almost certainly centered on public policy. Mr. Gore definitely does not share the president's passion for politics. And — this is not unimportant — he does not even play golf. "I don't think this was a real friendship; these are two very different character types," said Mr. Gore's close friend Martin Peretz, one of his Harvard mentors, who now owns The New Republic. Among the slights perceived by the president is that not only are few Clintonites on the Gore campaign, but that the team is chock-a-block with people who have gone out of their way to criticize Mr. Clinton, starting with Joe Lieberman, Mr. Gore's running mate. Some of Mr. Gore's closest friends speak of the president with extravagant, open disdain, especially Mr. Peretz, who is already on record as having referred to Mr. Clinton as "loathesome." Mr. Peretz said about Mr. Gore that "Even though he had a hard relationship with his father, he also had unconditional love, while Clinton didn't have this with his father," who died before he was born. "My guess is Clinton resents Al, and that's why I think he's stuck it to him on occasion." One such occasion came in July, when The New York Times reported that the president had been telling friends he thought either Senator Bob Graham or Senator George J. Mitchell, both of whom he had considered in 1992, would be fine choices as Mr. Gore's running mate. "The vice president didn't really appreciate that," Mr. Peretz said. "I don't remember his exact words, but `That sure was helpful' was the content." Some Clinton aides suggest that the relevant resentment cuts the other way, that it is Mr. Gore who envies Mr. Clinton's political skills and is too proud to admit he needs help from the acknowledged master. Mr. Gore and Mr. Clinton have each made public comments that showed some ambivalence about the other. Mr. Clinton once told The Times that Mr. Gore's campaign had gotten off to a sluggish start and that he had been advising him to loosen up. Not long ago, the vice president volunteered in an interview that one factor that helped him decide to run was "seeing the job up close" and not being daunted in the least. "This guy's done a great job, by and large, and has strengths I don't. But then, I have some strengths he doesn't." A Diffidence Shared Another open sore is the antipathy between the two men's families. Even Mr. Gore's mother, Pauline, once made condescending remarks about Mr. Clinton to a reporter for The New Yorker. Though she herself was born poor in rural Tennessee and struggled to put herself through school, she seemed to sneer at the president's humble upbringing: "Bill came up in a very provincial atmosphere. And even though he went to Yale, and he went to Oxford, you don't undo or move out of that provincial atmosphere that has influenced you in your early life." Tipper Gore and Hillary Clinton were never particularly close, but after "Tipper's people put out that she and the girls were appalled" by the Lewinsky matter, Mrs. Clinton never forgot it, a friend of the first lady said. The Gore and Clinton children had never been any more than polite, either, several family friends said. Though Sarah Gore and Chelsea Clinton are the same age — college seniors now — they never made much of a connection. Even Mrs. Gore's normally tight-lipped spokeswoman, Camille Johnston, spoke disparagingly of Mrs. Clinton in a recent interview, comparing the two women while making a point about how little Mrs. Gore cares about her public image. "With Mrs. Clinton, there was always such a concerted effort with image," Ms. Johnston said. "She went from housewife to cookie lady to whatever. Mrs. Gore hasn't done that, so it's easier. She hasn't had to turn into somebody else." And the Gores' oldest daughter, Karenna Gore Schiff, answered frankly when asked if the first lady and her mother are friends: "They've definitely had a personal relationship," she said, using the past tense. "Obviously, the last eight years seems like a lifetime. But they call each other on important occasions." At the Democratic convention, Ms. Schiff, who is one of her father's top advisers, gave an enthusiastic nomination speech in prime time. But another interesting shot of her came earlier that week, when the camera found her while Mr. Clinton was delivering his speech. As she watched, a frown flitted across her face, then disappeared into an expression so perfectly, willfully blank that it expressed plenty. When clapping seemed absolutely required, she put her hands together every few seconds in a way that could not have produced any sound. Two Rivals Who Meshed A lifetime ago, as Ms. Schiff says, way back in 1992, Governor Bill Clinton and Senator Al Gore didn't know one another terribly well. Though they came from the same part of the country, the two men had only met once, at Little Rock's Excelsior Hotel in 1987, when Mr. Gore was running for president and went to Mr. Clinton to ask for his endorsement. Their identical aspirations made them natural competitors — and Mr. Gore seemed to have jumped ahead — said Mr. Gore's cousin, Ark Monroe, who escorted him to the meeting. But Mr. Gore told the governor that they should consider one another natural allies, two southern moderates who could help hold their party together. If he was elected, Mr. Gore said, it wouldn't hurt Mr. Clinton's chances but would bolster them. He'd be paving the way, see? The meeting went fine, said Mr. Monroe, a longtime friend of Mr. Clinton. "I always kind of thought they'd be rivals, but they seemed to get along." Mr. Gore did not get the endorsement, though. And the next time the two met, it was Mr. Clinton who was paving the way. Mr. Gore had just written his environmental book, "Earth in the Balance," which had greatly impressed the governor. On the June night in 1992 that Mr. Clinton interviewed Senator Gore about joining him on the Democratic ticket, they talked for three hours and got pretty wonky, according to a former Gore aide. Before long, they were comparing favorite economists, and were soon telling friends that this partnership was not only going to work, but was going to be great. "They saw the campaign and the issues the same way; they have scarcely any differences on policy, and that's of enormous importance to the two of them," said Reed Hundt, who attended St. Albans with Mr. Gore and Yale Law School with Mr. Clinton, who later named him chairman of the Federal Communications Commission at Mr. Gore's urging. By all accounts, both men genuinely enjoyed their time together on the trail. "Clinton's enthusiasm was real," said a man who has worked for both the president and the vice president. "He thought, `Here's a guy my age, a team player who'll follow the script and not upstage me.' "Clinton was digging it, and there was no jealousy and no backbiting. But there were people sticking the knife in Gore — the Gephardt crowd and the Hillary crowd." George Stephanopoulos, a close Clinton aide, was a leading skeptic, since he had worked for both Richard Gephardt and Michael Dukakis, neither of whom had appreciated the rough treatment they got from Mr. Gore during the 1988 primary campaign. But, former White House aides recall, it was Mrs. Clinton who drove the first wedge between the two. Even before the election, her loyalists began jockeying to protect her position as first adviser — and even tried to kick Mr. Gore off the bus, though he refused to budge. Susan Thomases, a longtime friend of Mrs. Clinton, who had words with Mr. Gore not long after he was named to the ticket, denied there was ever any rivalry. "No one tried to kick him off" the bus, she said. "He was just initially reticent about it, that being his personality, and then he stayed on and on and on. I don't know why so much was made of that." But someone who has known both the Clintons well since the 1970's and has worked with Mr. Gore — and has been disillusioned by all three of them — said that Mrs. Clinton had worked hard to curb Mr. Gore's power from the start. "Early on, Gore thought he would have much more influence," this person said. "But she put a stop to that." These efforts only intensified after Mr. Gore's October debate with Dan Quayle; Mrs. Clinton, among others, thought he seemed a little slow to defend her husband on the character issue. Assembling a Portfolio Despite the conflicts, Mr. Gore at least arguably still had more responsibility than any previous vice president. And not without some reason. In a recent interview, Mr. Gore said he agreed to join the ticket in part because he felt he could make not just a difference but perhaps the difference in the race. Pollsters did find that Mr. Gore's presence on the ticket made people feel better about voting for Mr. Clinton. His conservative persona and placid, no-surprises-here personal life seemed to offset concerns about Mr. Clinton's character, and his experience, particularly on foreign policy, eased worries that Governor Clinton was a little weak in this area. Stan Greenberg, then Mr. Clinton's and now Mr. Gore's pollster, recommended constant references to the Clinton-Gore ticket and commercials that showed both men. After they won in November, but before the inaugural, representatives for the two worked out an extraordinary agreement, a prenuptial agreement of sorts. The deal hammered out by Roy Neel, who negotiated on Mr. Gore's behalf, and Thomas F. McLarty III, who stood in for Mr. Clinton, codified their partnership, and spelled out a degree of shared responsibility that was such a departure from the norm that it essentially amounted to a reinvention of the vice presidency. The president agreed to hand over real power — enormous policy and personnel responsibilities — as well as to include Mr. Gore and his staff in all important meetings. Mr. Clinton also promised to lunch with him privately, every week, no matter what. Once they took office, technology and the environment became part of Mr. Gore's portfolio, along with the "re-inventing government" streamlining project and a heavy foreign policy role. And Mr. Gore was able to position loyalists throughout the executive branch. Yet the turf battles between Mr. Gore and Mrs. Clinton intensified in the West Wing, where their surrogates fought over everything from media attention to office space. The two of them were not just Mr. Clinton's top advisers but, often, the only ones whose opinion seemed to count. "You always knew whether it was an important meeting when you saw whether Hillary and the vice president were there or not," said Robert Reich, the former labor secretary. "They were the president's two top advisers and everybody else played second fiddle. If they were there, it was an important meeting. If they weren't, it wasn't." A former administration official said that the only time he saw Mr. Gore lose out on a policy issue was in 1993, when he opposed health care reform and obliquely took on Mrs. Clinton. "The president was moving ahead but a lot of us thought there hadn't been proper economic or political vetting," the official said, and Mr. Gore urged him to go to the president and make their case. "It was the only time he felt he couldn't go himself," said the former official, who is no longer in contact with either man, "and that's because it involved her." Mrs. Clinton was widely considered the stronger of Mr. Clinton's two strong seconds until the debacle that followed, and the Republican "revolution" of 1994, when Democrats lost control of the Congress. At that point, the Clintons brought back Dick Morris, a former adviser, to help reposition the White House, move it back to the political center. Mr. Gore, who allied himself with Mr. Morris, wound up playing a major role in their rehabilitation efforts. "Al's hand was strengthened," said a former consultant who attended these meetings, because those in the liberal wing of Mr. Clinton's White House had been repudiated on health care and in the midterm elections. Mr. Clinton relied heavily on him, especially at this time, presidential aides said. Mr. Gore stiffened Mr. Clinton's resolve against Republican efforts to dismantle environmental regulations, zealously raised campaign funds, as the world now knows, and even made it his business to make sure the cabinet secretaries stayed on message. "He was relentless," said the former consultant, who has no ties to or affinity for Mr. Gore. In 1996, the vice president's support of the welfare-reform bill was considered decisive. "Gore was clearly telling the president to sign the Republican bill, even though it was punitive," said Mr. Reich, who strongly opposed the bill. "There were very, very few voices inside the administration telling Clinton to sign the bill, and Gore was the adviser in chief, the most important voice in favor of signing." One key to their relationship was that Mr. Gore was not afraid to disagree with the president. He was also often the only person in the room who could cajole Mr. Clinton out of a mood, White House aides said. In mock news conferences where staff members threw out questions to prepare him for the real thing, Mr. Clinton would sometimes get agitated by a hardball question. He'd vent for a few minutes, then Mr. Gore, on cue, would say something like, "That's right, Mr. President, answer it just like that. That would be perfect" — and they'd laugh and the storm clouds would pass. They had their running jokes, too — one mutual fascination, circa 1993-94, was the Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt case — but theirs was primarily a business relationship. And much of their business was conducted privately. Their weekly lunch took on even greater significance after 1994, when it became clear, as one former official put it, that they had to watch what they said in staff meetings carefully because "every slob in the room was taking notes for their book." These lunches were definitely not social occasions. "Clinton would just go in and sit down and Gore would come with a foot-and- a-half stack of books," said this official. Mr. Gore has said the lunches almost always touched on environmental policy. Several former Clinton aides with no ties to Mr. Gore said that his influence on the president has often been understated. He brought Mr. Clinton around on the importance of environmental issues, they said. During the budget negotiations with Republicans that led to the government shutdown., he successfully argued that the environment should be one of the areas on which the administration would not compromise. Feeling a Breach of Trust But then, of course, revelations of the president's relationship with Ms. Lewinsky, which began during the shutdown, essentially ended whatever friendship had existed with his vice president. When the scandal hit, one friend of the vice president said, Mr. Gore at first believed the president, and even defended him to Tipper and his daughters, who did not. When the truth became known, Mr. Gore felt betrayed; the president had lied to his face in the Cabinet meeting in January 1998 when the the president said there was nothing to the story. But then, a Clinton friend said that the president also felt betrayed by Mr. Gore — abandoned when he needed him most. Publicly, of course, Mr. Gore stood outside the White House after Mr. Clinton was impeached and said his boss would be remembered as one of the nation's greatest presidents. Standing right behind the vice president as he spoke, Hillary Clinton nodded her head vigorously at every word Mr. Gore said. The vice president was inclined to stick by Mr. Clinton not only because of his role, friends said, but because he, like the first lady, felt that Mr. Clinton had in part suffered at the hands of Republican bloodhounds — some of the same people, in fact, who had worked so hard to defeat his father, Senator Albert Gore, in a legendarily dirty race in 1970. But privately, said a friend of Tipper Gore, the vice president was sickened. "He has daughters," this friend said. "That was a moment Gore lost a great deal of respect for him." Their work lives went on, of course. "It wasn't exactly the same, because nothing was exactly the same, but it wasn't too noticeable," said one former administration official. Until last year, that is, when both Mr. Gore and Mrs. Clinton began revving up their respective campaigns, and their history began to repeat itself. "There was a lot of competition, a lot of pent-up political ambition in the room when she's running for Senate, he's running for president and Clinton still thinks he's president," said the former official. "Who gets to go to what event?" But it was a relief in some ways, too, this same official said. Finally, there could be physical as well as emotional separation from the president: "Gore had the cover to go out on the campaign." And to the vice president, the campaign trail had never looked so appealing. 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