Clinton, Gore: Partners in Politics : Democrats: The candidates have focused on teamwork. Aides say that the public show of affection is also evident behind the scenes.

He is Bill Clinton’s Exhibit A; living, breathing proof that the Democratic presidential nominee’s taste and judgment exceeds that of President Bush, or so the Arkansas governor says at nearly every turn of the road in his campaign’s journey by bus across the Midwest.

“He gave you Dan Quayle and I gave you Al Gore,” Clinton told about a thousand people who gathered in Centralia to see him and his running mate at dusk Tuesday.

This is the nation’s newest political alliance. And to hear their aides speak of it, the union that started as a marriage of political convenience is headed toward devotion.

Traveling together every day, spending day and night rushing from fields to suburbs, the two have operated as a political yin and yang, turning the traditional running mate relationship on its ear.

Usually, except for a symbolic one-day trip right after the convention, candidates travel separately on the theory that they can cover more ground with the same message that way.

But these two have stuck together since leaving the Democratic convention in New York--five straight days now--under the not-exactly-optimal conditions of a rolling bus tour. Gore, in fact, canceled plans to leave the tour last weekend and decided to see it through to the end, today in St. Louis.

Clinton defined the relationship Tuesday morning in Louisville, where he and Gore told dozens of high school students that they would spend more money for education and job training than the Bush Administration has.

“Sen. Gore and I, we’re forming a partnership,” he said. “There are too many Americans who still believe that they have to make decisions all by themselves all alone. . . . What works today in this country is teamwork.”

Aides to both candidates say that the public show of affection is also evident behind the scenes.

“They’re like old friends,” said Marla Romash, Gore’s spokeswoman.

There is more than simple friendship at work, however. Gore and Clinton, who first met in 1987, share a similar approach to politics: Both have worked to move the Democratic Party toward the center. As they like to point out before voters, both are longtime political animals who have maintained an attachment to their small-town roots.

“They have very similar views,” said Dee Dee Myers, Clinton’s press secretary. “What they talk about in public are also the things they talk about privately. They bounce things off each other. They are intellectual peers.”

Peers they are--Clinton is 45 years old, Gore 44. But there is no question who is the senior partner. Gore has been unfailingly, earnestly deferential. At their joint appearances, he takes pains to inject a request before he dares say a word.

“Could I add a brief note to that?” he regularly asks. “Can I say something about that, too?”

The Tennessee senator also has embraced the traditional vice presidential role of cheerleader as if he was born with pompons in his hands. At every stop, he recites the litany of Clinton’s political achievements. And in areas where Clinton has a scant resume, like national security, Gore seeks to reassure the audience with the authority of a senator who has specialized in arms control.

“We were all extremely impressed,” he says after detailing Senate reaction to Clinton’s foreign affairs proposals.

Gore takes pains to dispatch Clinton’s personal story--which the campaign considers integral to its success--reminding voters at every turn that Clinton grew up poor and without a father, and worked his way through college and graduate school.

There have been no public signs of tension between the two men. Asked about their differences at a televised town meeting in Louisville Monday night, Gore and Clinton grinned.

“There was a little friction when I got the hole-in-one at the miniature golf course,” deadpanned Gore, who then moved to assure his audience of their joint determination to better the country.

OK, so Gore has won the symbolic competitions. After he shot the hole-in-one during some leisure time in Pennsylvania, the partners quickly decided not to keep score.

Later, they tossed a football at a rest stop on the state turnpike. The consensus: There was a reason Gore was captain of his high school team, while Clinton spent his Friday nights playing saxophone in the marching band.

The Democrats are traveling with their wives, Hillary Clinton and Mary Elizabeth (Tipper) Gore, who have been reduced to blonde bookends in recent days. The women last spoke publicly on Friday in Camden, N.J., not counting a Saturday visit they made to a Pennsylvania market.

But together, the foursome certainly makes an impression, with the wives waving to the crowd at every event, their arms clasped around each other.

On Tuesday, the candidates stopped at a freeway off-ramp near New Albany, where they picked up Indiana Gov. Evan Bayh. Gore stood and extemporaneously spoke on and on, even swiping one of Clinton’s signature lines. Referring to Clinton’s plan to increase taxes on those who earn more than $200,000 a year, Gore said: “We don’t want to soak ‘em. We want them to pay their fair share.”

Later, he repented of his long-windedness: “Too long. Sorry,” he mouthed to Clinton.

“Boy, Al’s kind of pumped up today,” Clinton said.

It is always easier for teams to mesh comfortably when things are going well, as they have been for the Democratic ticket. It has surged ahead in the polls by surprisingly broad margins, even accounting for the traditional “bounce” each party receives after its convention.

As a result, both Clinton and Gore have been largely broadcasting a positive message. Clinton did, however, issue a barbed response to Bush’s assertion Monday that the Democrat’s economic plan was “smoke and mirrors.”

“Well, he’s an expert on that subject--smoke and mirrors,” Clinton told reporters.

After motoring through parts of Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois Tuesday, the Clinton-and-Gore rolling bus tour came to a stop in St. Louis, where it will officially end with a midday rally today. Afterward, Clinton will return to the more customary mode of presidential candidate transportation--a plane.