Why Would Gore Pack It In Now?

WASHINGTON - Why did he do it? Al Gore was the front- runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. Every poll gave him a 3-1 lead or better over any other candidate. He had the best resume, the most supporters, the best organization, the most money. In all the United States, population 280 million, Gore had to be reckoned of the three or four people most likely to become the next president. Why in the world would he throw that chance away?

Gore's answer in his interview Sunday with 60 Minutes is not exactly convincing. He did not want to run again against George Bush, he said, because such a race "would inevitably involve a focus on the past that would in some measure distract from the focus on the future that I think all campaigns have to be about."

Gore's reluctance to focus on the past is a new thing. All through the 2002 campaign cycle, he traveled the country whipping up partisan Democratic crowds by asking, "Do you remember where you were when they stopped counting the votes?" -- meaning when the Supreme Court handed down its ruling that effectively made George Bush President. In September, October, and November of this year, no issue was more alive and vivid to Gore than the need to reverse the verdict of the 2000 election. Why has he suddenly eschewed that issue now?

Well there are focuses and there are focuses. By losing the presidency in 2000, Gore opened the way for the Republicans to establish a solid majority in both houses of Congress two years later -- and very probably for them to keep those majorities at least until 2007. And the question that more and more Democrats are now asking is: How did Gore manage to throw his election away? He started with every advantage: peace, prosperity, a predecessor who stood high in the polls. He faced a challenger burdened with all kinds of disadvantages -- a challenger who was not verbally nimble, who stood well to the right of the electorate as a whole, whose name was associated with wealth and privilege. Had Gore run a halfway competent campaign, many Democrats feel, he should have crushed Bush. Instead, Gore may have almost single-handedly inaugurated the first decade of total Republican political dominance since the 1920s.

Two months ago, Gore wanted Democratic loyalists to focus on the injustice supposedly done to him by Bush v. Gore -- that past he very much wished to keep alive. Today, though, when those Democrats focus on the past, what they are much more likely to see is the image of Al Gore bungling his way to defeat in three presidential debates. When those loyalists focus on the past, they no longer get so mad at Bush. Since Election Day 2002, they have been getting angrier and angrier at Gore.

Gore declined to run because he sensed that despite the enormous lead with which he would begin, he might well not be able to win his party's nomination in 2004.

So what do the Democrats do now? Their field of candidates is rapidly dividing into two groups: those who think that the 2002 elections were just a blip, demanding no basic rethinking of the party's old positions -- and those who perceive the elections as a warning and a danger that demands dramatic change now.

The blippers -- John Kerry and Joe Lieberman are probably the two most important -- argue that the Clinton formula that worked in the booming 1990s will work just as well in the terrorized 00s: Go very slightly to the left on economics, emphasize quality of life issues like the environment, downplay foreign policy. Kerry is against military action in Iraq. Lieberman is for it. But both agree that Iraq is much less urgent and important a problem than the weakness of the domestic economy.

So far there is only one candidate in the changer camp: Senator John Edwards of North Carolina. He's a largely unknown quantity, a first-term senator of great charm who has been talking more -- and more seriously -- about defence and terrorism than any other Democrat.

It's rumoured that Edwards is Bill Clinton's favourite candidate. If so, it shows how effectively Clinton has mastered the first lesson: Don't do what I did under the circumstances then; do what I would do under the circumstances now.

Of course, there's another theory about what Clinton really wants in 2004: He wants the Democrats to lose, so that the presidency is open in 2008, when Hillary is ready to run. Gore's decision to take a pass on the 04 contest means that he too will be seeking the nomination in 2008 -- which means that the big story of the next political cycle will be the looming nomination fight between Clinton and Gore; and that the greatest of all political kingmakers will be Bill Clinton himself, who will finally have to settle the question he's been brooding over for years: Whom does he dislike more? His former vice-president? Or his wife?