Al Gore struggles along, though the convention was supposed to give him some purpose. However, he still has yet to address his biggest problem, which comes directly from the ultimate campaigner, the Man from Hope, Bill Clinton. Gore is not Clinton, and that simple fact continues to hurt him. Too often during the Clinton years we saw how the president used the White House and politics as a mirror for his inner struggle. This mirror cannot be shown more clearly than following the Lewinsky imbroglio, after which Clinton called the yearlong constitutional crisis a "personal growth experience." So while the polls show a dead heat, given the economy and Clinton's success, Al Gore should be ahead by a considerable margin.
Of course, Al Gore is embattled by more than just the Lewinsky scandal, but it is Clinton's conflation of the political with the personal that has doomed the Gore presidential campaign. We've gone through an eight year period where we expect Clinton to "feel our pain," to emote his own feelings rather than speak of health care and foreign policy. The public and the media expect this sort of acting from politicians now. Al Gore, like Bob Dole and George Bush (pere) before him, has not latched onto the wave of emotions. While George W. Bush talks of compassion and wallows in his own sentiment, Al Gore has been desperately trying to revamp his image -- bringing forth such personae as Internet Al, Alpha Al, Populist Al and Policy Wonk Al (which is possibly the most annoying word the media uses).
This strategy is particularly repulsive from a man like Gore -- a man arguably more intelligent and motivated than Bush. And while intelligence does not necessarily make a good presidency (remember Wilson and Herbert Hoover), it is still a bad thing to stifle and hide. I would prefer to see the boring Al Gore go out than see him try to appeal to every focus group in America. If Al Gore can overcome the role of emotion in the post-Clinton era and bring back some of the substance into American politics, then his campaign will be a success.
Now that the Democratic National Convention is over, it would be better for liberals to call the convention a failure. The delegates ceremoniously popped the fallen balloons, marking the end of the Democratic National Convention, just as the campaign's precious bubble has popped and put them even with Bush. Partisan pundits ruled Al Gore's speech a success, a homerun by the tin woodsman, while the Republicans griped about his promises being unreasonable and his biography hokey.
More importantly, amid the throngs of liberals hooting and chanting, one type of Al Gore emerged as the Al Gore for the campaign -- good old Populist Al, with a fiddle-playing father from Possum Hollow, Tennessee. We saw enough of Gore's childhood to realize that he has always been boring (yes, also to prove that Gore was "thinking about the issues" while Bush was thinking about the beer).
If Al Gore were to ditch his populist rhetoric and run on substance and keep his private life private, he would not only be more successful, but also more courageous. A fitting metaphor for the Gore situation came midway through his acceptance speech (which seemed more like a State of the Union address). Gore was busy defining what he would do as President (Free but fair trade? Doesn't sound logical, huh? Just buzzwords from labor and business). Then he got to the critical moment of his speech. He started to say who he was, and the crowd began to cheer, which was not surprising, since they would have cheered a bubble rising in a water cooler. However, Gore, perhaps because of his rap for slow speaking, rushed through the applause to say "and that's the man who I am." No one really heard the line.
While the "dream team" of Gore and Lieberman say that they are now about the issues, they instead are engaging in a sort of class warfare, manipulating facts about the Bush tax cut in such a way as to pit working class people against the Republicans. If Gore could emerge from behind this negative facade, he would be much more likeable and much more successful.
Gore's insistence (or rather his aides insistence) upon choosing an identity other than his true identity will lead him astray. As the editors of The New Republic said before the speech, "[I]f the pundits hold that the Democratic convention will be a success to the extent that Gore "truly reveals" himself to the American people, let's hope they judge it a failure." By running on substance, he will give himself a better shot at winning.
