Give Al a Chance
Americans aren’t talking much about politics these days, but whenever last year’s election comes up the pundits and politicians seem to have nothing but contempt for Al Gore. Democratic strategists especially accuse him of campaign malpractice, of failing to embrace the Clinton economic legacy, of losing at a time of peace and prosperity. “He should have run on the outstanding record of the Clinton administration, rather than running away from it,” said one Democratic insider, echoing the sentiment of many. To them, Bush didn’t beat Gore – rather, Gore let Bush win.
To be sure, any defense of the Gore campaign must acknowledge his problems as a candidate. Most significant is his inability to appear comfortable on television. Given that the public’s primary relationship with a candidate is through the television set, it matters less how smart or capable a politician is than how he comes off on TV – how “likable” he seems.
After debates, for example, analysts ask how well a candidate performed, not what he said, which is why Gore lost his first debate with Bush despite giving more informed and sophisticated answers – voters simply found him arrogant and resented his disdainful sighing at Bush. Whatever the reason for Gore’s unpleasant television persona – his stern brows, his stiff and hulking body, his know-it-all air, or our own anti-intellectualism – the bottom line is it was a drag on his candidacy.
Gore also seemed unable to rein in a character flaw that led him to take more credit than he deserved or to inflate the significance of his facts and ideas. Here was the vice president of the United States, a candidate with a record of accomplishment, a recognized leader in foreign policy, technology and the environment, yet he still felt a need to prove how important he was. There always was an element of truth to his claims – about facilitating the internet, exposing toxic waste sites, visiting natural disasters, inspiring Love Story – but he seemed to overstate them. Unfortunately for him, each tall tale fed right into a media culture that feasted on such small and juicy campaign nuggets. Gore became a “serial exaggerator.”
But let’s face it: anyone can pick apart a political carcass. There’s not a single candidate without shortcomings, and usually the flaws of one candidate are no greater or worse than the flaws of another, which means they usually neutralize each other. Had a few hundred votes in Florida gone the other way, we’d now be calling Gore’s flaws “traits” and would likely find them endearing. And it would be Republicans second-guessing their choice of a candidate who sounded so incoherent and came off with such swagger and braggadocio.
So if it wasn’t his flaws that undermined his candidacy, why did Gore lose? The simple answer is that given the exact same circumstances of the 2000 election, it would have been hard for any Democrat to win. Gore ran about as good a campaign as any Democrat could have run last year.
Most Democrats critical of Gore say that Bill Clinton would have run a better campaign. But they neglect to add that Clinton was singularly blessed in each of his two bids for the White House. In both 1992 and 1996, Clinton had weak opponents with no messages, he faced a Republican Party riven by the religious right, he had economic issues on his side, and perhaps most important of all, he had Ross Perot draining the angry middle out of the Republican column. Michael Dukakis might have won under these circumstances.
Gore had none of these advantages. Instead of Perot hurting the Republicans, he had Nader pulling away Democrats. Instead of a divided Republican Party, he faced a unified, well-funded and moderate-sounding GOP that submerged its internal rifts for the cause of victory. Instead of opponents who seemed out of touch with nothing to say, he had a rival who appeared likable on TV and who had vanquished tough challengers in elections past. And instead of having economic issues filling his sails, Gore had to contend with the early stages of our current slowdown, including the stock market plunge of March 2000.
It’s also easy to forget that Clinton received only 43 percent of the vote in 1992 and only 49.2 percent – less than a majority – in 1996, when he was the incumbent running with a growing economy and against an anemic opponent. Gore, with 48.4 percent, nearly matched Clinton’s 1996 level and in fact received a much higher percentage of votes than any first-time non-incumbent Democratic candidate since Jimmy Carter eked out 50 percent plus a whisker in 1976.
Gore’s near majority is even more impressive when put in the context of Democratic performance in past presidential campaigns. Democrats used to boast of a New Deal majority, but in truth there never was one. Ever since Franklin Roosevelt won with an underwhelming 53.3 percent in 1944, a modest margin for a wartime president, only two Democratic candidates – Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and Jimmy Carter in 1976 – have made it over the 50 percent mark, and their victories came at unusual times against weakened opponents. Two Democratic presidents hailed for their victories, John Kennedy and Harry Truman, received a mere percentage point more than Gore.
Excluding Johnson’s lopsided victory, Democratic candidates between 1948 and 1996 managed to win an average of only 44.7 percent of the popular vote. Considering that Gore exceeded this average by almost 4 percent and won the popular vote by cobbling together a new Democratic coalition of social liberals, blue collar families, suburban women, and urban voters, perhaps Democrats should be looking to understand rather than mock his appeal. (Worth noting: for these same elections the Republican average is 46.9 percent, which Bush exceeded by only 1 percent).
The most serious charge leveled at Gore is that he squandered the prosperity vote. It’s true, as Gore critics say, that people approved of the Clinton administration’s economic performance. But when asked in polls last year who was most responsible for the good economy, only about 20-plus percent said Clinton, with a great deal more giving credit to American entrepreneurs and workers and almost as many saying that Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve Board deserve their due. In one October 2000 poll, the number of people giving credit to Clinton was matched by the number who said the government is not primarily responsible for the prosperity.
So perhaps Gore didn’t run on the Clinton record because most voters weren’t really giving Clinton the credit and didn’t think a Republican administration would make much of an economic difference. And in a twist of fate summed up by the old saying that success has a thousand fathers but failure is an orphan, Gore had to deal with a growing uncertainty about the economy that was manifested in the massive loss of wealth from the March 2000 stock market drop and the faltering of disposable income throughout the year.
That Gore couldn’t take credit for prosperity but was tinged with declining market confidence ironically made the economy a hidden liability rather than a presumptive asset for his campaign. Democratic centrists lambaste Gore for basing his economic message on middle-class populism rather than continuing prosperity, but Gore may have understood that middle-Americans were not as buoyant as they were the year before and that the only credible economic appeal he had left was to assure them that he would be on their side if the economy started to go down.
Democrats who blame Gore also don’t give enough credit to Bush as a candidate. Unlike his father in 1992 and Bob Dole in 1996, Bush refused to run a defensive campaign and instead crafted a message that assuaged voter concerns about the GOP and, just as Clinton had done in 1992, co-opted the most popular parts of his opponent’s platform.
In many ways Bush created an airtight and unassailable message for his campaign. To a nation that didn’t like Washington, he portrayed himself as an outsider and a uniter who would change the bitter status quo that Gore could not but represent. To those anxious about his leadership experience, he reassured us with Dick Cheney and Colin Powell. To suburban voters turned off by the GOP’s hard edge in recent campaigns, he embraced priests, women and minorities at campaign stops and called himself a “compassionate conservative” and “different kind of Republican.” To former Reagan Democrats in battleground states, he focused on character and, through code words like “integrity” and “honor,” turned Clinton’s personal life into a campaign issue.
Bush also brilliantly put the Democrats on the defensive, stealing their signature health and education issues and inoculating himself against criticism by calling every Gore retort a negative attack. Bush turned out to be one tough and appealing candidate, yet Gore still won the popular vote.
Gore also was forced to walk an extremely difficult political tightrope created by the Nader candidacy. In socially conservative states where the Bush character message was making headway among working class Democrats – West Virginia, Arkansas, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Missouri and Tennessee – Gore tried to sound less liberal on the environment and on social issues such as gun control. But he couldn’t go too far for fear of losing swing Nader supporters in more liberal states, such as Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin, Minnesota and even California. Indeed Nader campaigned frequently and hard in these states, forcing Gore to visit them more frequently than he had planned.
According to the most conservative exit polls, Gore would have captured 47 percent of the Nader vote, compared to 21 percent for Bush. Without Nader, Gore easily would have won Florida, giving him the election; using less conservative numbers, Gore also would have taken New Hampshire, again making him the winner. Without Nader, Gore could have worried less about some Democratic-leaning states in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest, and instead could have poured time and money into Republican-leaning Ohio, West Virginia, Arkansas and Tennessee, forcing Bush to spend more time and resources in the states trending his way. Nader’s candidacy simply turned the strategic tables on Gore, and there was nothing any Democrat could have done to prevent it.
Gore also had to carry the Clinton burden throughout the campaign. Gore did about as much as he could to cleanse himself of Clinton by declaring himself “my own man” at the convention and distancing himself from the White House during the campaign. But his mere association with Clinton conditioned the press and public to turn every Gore misstatement or exaggeration into a character issue. Bush shaded the truth plenty during the campaign, but it never stuck to him the way it did to Gore largely because the public had no reason to suspect his motives or character.
Finally, Gore had one other burden he couldn’t control and didn’t deserve: for the final three weeks, virtually every poll missed the actual Gore plurality and instead anointed Bush the more popular candidate. Some even gave Bush a 5 point – meaning 5 million vote – lead.
To the public, the press and the campaigns themselves, these polls were defining. Even before a single vote was cast, Bush came off as a winner, Gore a loser. Campaigns often rise and fall based on their confidence level, and it’s difficult to sustain a winning aura when the polls are pounding you day after day. Political scientists believe that on Election Day some undecided voters go with the likely winner, and though we’ll never know for sure, it’s certainly possible that the polls may have cost Al Gore the presidency.
Al Gore didn’t win the White House, but under the circumstances he ran a solid and effective campaign. The least he deserves is a fair accounting of his candidacy and an end to the misguided and inaccurate conventional wisdom about how poorly he did.