Gore Dodged a Bullet, but Gephardt, Bush May Shoot Holes in His Plans

Al Gore isn’t likely to remember last week for anything except Atty. Gen. Janet Reno’s decision not to subject him to a special prosecutor. But that wasn’t the week’s only event with implications for his future. While Reno’s verdict defused the legal challenge confronting Gore, two other developments cast into starker relief the political challenge he will face as the 2000 campaign approaches.

Reno lifted the most ominous cloud over Gore when she decided not to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the fund-raising phone calls he made from his office. He still remains vulnerable to new revelations in all the investigations swirling around the White House, because anything that damages President Clinton also damages Gore. But that is very different from launching a presidential campaign with a special prosecutor aimed at your forehead. No one should underestimate how much the removal of that legal threat benefits Gore’s long-term prospects.

Yet last week’s events also showed a more subtle, long-range political squeeze taking shape around Gore. In Boston on Tuesday, House Minority Leader Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) unfurled the flag of a revanchist liberalism that will pressure Gore to tilt left during the Democratic primaries of 2000. One day later, while announcing his bid for a second term as Texas governor, Republican George W. Bush sketched out a sobered conservatism that could restore the GOP’s tattered appeal to centrist suburban families in the presidential general election.

The risk to Gore--still remote, but already visible in outline--is that he will move to contain the threat during the primaries in a way that increases the threat during a general election, if he gets that far. Put another way, Bush served notice last week that if Gore leans too far left in order to preempt Gephardt, at least one potential GOP nominee is ready to fill the vacuum in the center.

In his remarkable speech at Harvard University, Gephardt made it clear that if he runs in 2000, it will be as the herald of the disaffected left. Although he praised some of Clinton’s accomplishments, Gephardt at points attacked Clinton’s New Democrat experiment with stunning ferocity. “Some . . . New Democrats,” Gephardt scoffed, “set their compass only off the values of others,” “market a political strategy masquerading as policy” and lack “core values.”

Straining even the ordinarily elastic standards of spin, Gephardt aides now insist that he didn’t aim those words at Clinton. But White House aides, not surprisingly, are furious; so are many moderates in Gephardt’s own caucus.

The day after his speech, the three co-chairmen of the 41-member House New Democratic Coalition sent him a stinging letter pointedly noting that a clear majority of House Democrats sided with Clinton--and against Gephardt--on such issues as the balanced budget and trade with China. “Do we all lack ‘core values’?” the legislators wrote. That letter foreshadows more tension ahead between moderate and liberal House Democrats.

The longer-term implication of Gephardt’s cri de coeur is to erase any prospect that Gore can make it through 2000 without a serious ideological debate over the party’s direction. Gephardt flatly rejected key pillars of Clintonism (free trade, the balanced budget) and, even though vague in sections, positioned himself to offer an alternative path (more public spending, radical simplification of the tax code) if the economy stumbles.

The risk to Gephardt is that he’s isolating himself from voters who feel they are getting ahead--a rather substantial group when the unemployment rate is only 4.6%. But it doesn’t hurt Gephardt’s argument that some of the ideas he wants to restore as Democratic priorities--increasing public investment, guaranteeing universal health care--were Clinton priorities during his more populist incarnation in 1992.

Gore’s camp believes that Gephardt is misreading the discontent many Washington liberal groups express over Clinton’s current course for a broader unhappiness among grass-roots Democrats: “You will not win a Democratic primary by attacking Bill Clinton,” said one Gore advisor. But Gore himself has been torn between publicly defending Clinton’s direction and privately courting the same groups Gephardt is trying to mobilize. Sooner or later, suitors must bring flowers, which means Gore will face escalating pressure to match Gephardt’s bouquets to the left.

Last week’s events in Texas offered one of the first signs that Republicans might be able to take advantage if the Democrats do lean back to the left in 2000. In 1996, Clinton broke the GOP hold on suburban families, a key swing vote, not only because he precisely targeted his campaign agenda at them, but because GOP challenger Bob Dole seemed intent on repelling them. Bush, on the other hand, has demonstrated an eye for the cul de sac every bit as keen as Clinton’s.

Where Dole talked about eliminating the Education Department, Bush last week praised teachers and offered an ambitious plan to end social promotion. Where Dole wavered on regulating tobacco, Bush has signed tough legislation combating underage smoking and drinking. Where Dole sought to repeal the ban on assault weapons, Bush promised more arrests for juveniles with guns. Bush’s announcement speech was so thick with economy-sized, family-friendly ideas that it was tempting to check under the podium for Dick Morris.

As a presidential candidate, Bush would face the inverse of Gore’s predicament. If he steps onto the long road to New Hampshire, Bush will be regularly enticed to run right in ways that could complicate a general election. But with his bottomless capacity to raise money, his high name identification and his potential to attract support from both moderates and conservatives, Bush may be better positioned than any other Republican to resist that pressure.

That’s a discussion for a later time. What’s clear now is that Bush is the one possible GOP contender who shows signs of learning from Clinton’s suburban success last year. That’s an important piece of potential architecture for 2000. So is Gephardt’s crusade to revive liberalism. These are still faint and distant mechanisms, but if Al Gore isn’t nimble, he could someday find himself ground between them.

Ronald Brownstein’s column appears in this space every Monday.