Sunday, Sep 7, 2008
In a joint appearance with Sen. Bill Bradley in Iowa, Al Gore comes out swinging.
Oct 10, 1999 | He may have made his way to Iowa by way of Air Force Two, and from Fort Dodge to Ames to Des Moines via a 16-vehicle motorcade, but Vice President Al Gore continued making like a rabid underdog this weekend, his jaws locked on the ankles of his surprisingly threatening challenger, former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley.
Energized like a speed-freak trucker driving cross country, Gore sounded the themes that he hopes will help him defeat Bradley, as the two men shared a stage for the first time outside of D.C. at the Iowa state Democratic party's Jefferson Jackson Dinner Saturday night. Also for the first time in the two-man race for the Democratic nomination, there was excitement and conflict and, yes, even a tangible sense of hostility in the air.
Gore tenaciously, enthusiastically called on Bradley to debate him every week all fall, showing an energy heretofore unseen to many voters and reporters who had previously questioned whether or not he has a pulse. Citing issue after issue where he feels his record is strong and Bradley's weak (ethanol, Reaganomics, vouchers), Gore called on his cheerleaders in the audience to "Stay and fight!" for future liberal battles -- a thinly veiled reference to Bradley's retirement from the Senate in 1996, as well as his brief flirtation with third-party politics.
In response, Bradley, essentially shrugged and rolled his eyes, not deigning to condescend to the vice president's desire to turn the Democratic presidential nomination into a street fight.
Gore's relentless enthusiasm and his lust to enter into the political fray painted a stark contrast with Bradley's speech and style and, indeed, the two campaigns each man is waging. When all is said and done about the boring clones Democrats will have to choose from, the two men laid out a very distinct choice for voters.
Gore is rah-rah and boo-hiss and ready to scrap; he delivers direct appeals to union members and farmers and party loyalists; he walks into a room and wants to shake everyone's hand and tell them "what's in my heart."
Bradley is cool and thoughtful, bespectacled and remote; he wants politics to go in a lofty direction; he seems to only reluctantly mingle with the riff-raff.
Some Iowans found Bradley refreshing and Gore cloying and more than a little disingenuous. Others got juiced by Gore and scratched their heads at Bradley's icy professorial statesmanship.
Whatever, it made for some damn fine political drama, lapped up by the 3,000 party faithful who attended the Iowa Democratic Party's $60-a-plate chicken cordon-blech dinner.
The Gore camp is running a bit scared ever since polls of New Hampshire and New York Democrats showed Bradley pulling ahead of Gore, and FEC reports showed that the Bradley campaign raised more cash than it did in the latest quarter. So it's leaving nothing to chance -- not even the sign-posting competition that emerges at political events like this, with highly regimented rules and regulations to ensure equal treatment to candidates. Before the allotted hour, Gore staffers fastened their signs onto long plastic poles sealed in cement buckets so they could just walk in and plop them down, scattering them like sentries at Buckingham Palace, while the Bradleyites scattered throughout with tape and posterboard, like high school juniors running for high school student association. "Organization, baby," said one Gore staffer. "It's how you win Iowa."
Indeed, Gore seems to be taking nothing for granted. A Sept. 20-22 Mason-Dixon poll of Iowa likely caucus-goers showed him beating Bradley 45 percent to 33 percent -- but, significantly, 22 percent of the voters remain undecided, and Bradley has been chipping away at what was once the vice president's 40-point lead. Memories of Gary Hart's momentum-building strong second place showing in '84 loom large. Gore wants to win here, and he knows that he has to win big.
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