Asked about details, they were solemn but fuzzy. “Didn’t I say ‘Praise the Lord’?” Lieberman wondered.
“Yes, and then you recited a verse that I recognized,” said Gore.
“And that he finished!” gushed Lieberman.
“It was a verse of thanksgiving,” said Gore.
“I think from the Prophets or the Psalms,” said the senator. “From the Old Testament.”
It could have been Orientation Day at the Businessmen’s Bible Study Class. In fact, it was just another pit stop on the holy grail campaign trail. This year candidates seem to regard the act of witnessing to their faith (and to family values) as the hot ticket of admission to the contest–if not the key to victory. For Gore, public religiosity offers something else: the chance to be born again politically after the prosperous but morally unsettling presidency of Bill Clinton.
Gore’s prayers may not be enough, since Clinton himself wants into the revival tent. On the very day the new Democratic ticket was in Atlanta, the president was near Chicago, stealing headlines at a meeting of evangelicals by offering a vivid account of his quest for spiritual maturity. It may have made Clinton feel better, but it infuriated the Gore camp. “That’s the last thing we needed at this point,” said one Gore adviser.
A generation ago, faith was a given, but politicians discussed it only when forced to do so. Forty years ago, Democrats in Los Angeles nominated John F. Kennedy, who vowed to keep religion and politics totally apart, and became the country’s first (and still only) Roman Catholic president. A Biblical 40 years later, Gore is going back to L.A. this week to claim the Democratic nomination. He’s taking with him not only the first non-Christian ever to be part of a major national ticket, but a running mate who insists on his right to brag about his faith in public–and to pray aloud as a deal goes down.
Still, as the convention began, there was little evidence that Al Gore’s dramatic Leap of Faith–however laudable as a cultural milestone–had altered the fundamental features of the race for the White House. George W. Bush’s lead stood at 48-38 in the NEWSWEEK Poll, down only one point from the previous week despite a flood of feel-good publicity for Gore. Voters did think he showed considerable courage in picking Lieberman. They seemed to like the new running mate. But there was no real improvement in their overall view of the vice president. Before the Lieberman pick, 52 percent of those polled thought Gore had shown “strong leadership qualities”; afterward, 53 percent thought so. Bush, by contrast, is seen that way by a robust 71 percent of voters. The moral is clear: you can’t win admiration by proxy. “Gore is stuck in the mud on leadership and that, in the end, is why we’re going to win,” said a top Bush aide.
Still, the Lieberman pick deepened the sense of a new Great Awakening. Only this time it’s not about the End of Days, but the end of Bill Clinton’s days as president. As they prepared for the L.A. convention–a Hollywood extravaganza of fund-raising and name-dropping–Gore’s aides fumed at the size and glitter of Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s social schedule. It included two lavish Barbra Streisand fund-raisers and a drop-by on the set of TV’s “The West Wing.”
Gore isn’t the only candidate who wants to put a galaxy of distance between himself and the seedy side of the Clintonian era. The efficient and upbeat way to do that–especially at a time when baby boomers are searching en masse for spiritual safe harbor–is to talk about your faith. Gov. George W. Bush struck first, by citing Jesus Christ as his favorite philosopher in a TV debate, by promising to “restore honor and dignity to the office, so help me God,” and then by declaring June 10 “Jesus Day” in Texas.
Now Gore is praying to win–even as the Democrats arrived in Sodom and Gomorrah at Hollywood and Vine. In Lieberman, Gore chose someone known for personal rectitude, for practicing his religion openly and ritualistically and for defending the right of others (including evangelicals) to do the same thing. A friend of Gore’s for many of the last 15 years–and a Democrat who denounced Clinton’s conduct with Monica Lewinsky in particularly harsh terms–Lieberman was also drafted to testify to Gore’s decency. He’s even been given the role of emotional translator, helping his stiff-as-a-board running mate to show a human side in public. Now it’s the media-savvy–and unflappable–Lieberman who makes the jokes while Gore does the laughing.
The very act of choosing Lieberman is supposed to prove that Gore has the guts to lead a populist crusade. “This is a man of courage!” Lieberman shouted to the crowd in Atlanta. “He showed it by picking me to be with him! Think how courageous Al Gore will be as president!” But it’s a tough sell. More voters may harbor fears of a Jew in national office than the polls show.
And Lieberman differs with Gore on some key issues: he supports vouchers for schools and lower capital-gains taxes, and has expressed interest in private investments of Social Security funds–a record that could help Bush deflect Gore’s attacks this fall. Stylistically the Democratic ticket mates may be wholesome, but perhaps too much C-Span for the age of MTV. Voters were disgusted by Monicagate, but as viewers they don’t want to do penance for it themselves. Bush, by contrast, has a sly smile, a reformed sinner’s riveting story line and just enough honky-tonk in his blue blood to be unpredictably entertaining.
Gore’s veep pick may have been brave and pioneering–but it was also shrewd and closely considered. Lieberman actually started out farther ahead than most insiders realized. He and Gore have been friends since the ’80s, when they were founding members of the centrist, pro-big-business Democratic Leadership Council. Lieberman ran for the Senate in Connecticut in 1988; Al Gore, running to be the Democratic nominee for president, was one of the few prominent Democrats to campaign for him that year. They were also allies in the Senate after Lieberman was elected, growing especially close when both were among the few Democrats to support the Persian Gulf War. The DLC remained a common thread. When Clinton became its chair in 1991, Joe Lieberman was his first Senate supporter. When Gore declared his candidacy this time round, Lieberman again was the first guy to enlist.
The veep’s vetters saw one problem as they looked over Lieberman’s record: he had expressed serious interest in allowing taxpayers to divert some of their payments from Social Security into new private retirement accounts. That was a key Bush proposal–and opposition to it is still a matter of dogma in the Democratic Party. Gore himself, sources told NEWSWEEK, quietly suggested that Lieberman write an op-ed piece renouncing his interest in the Social Security idea. Lieberman did so, and though the piece was never published, it found its way into his campaign file–where it surfaced a few weeks ago. Meanwhile, the Gores and the Lieberman family had grown close, with the Liebermans among the honored guests at the 1997 wedding of Gore’s eldest daughter, Karenna Gore Schiff.
And yet, friendship and preparation aside, Lieberman almost lost out. In the last weeks and days the decision came down to three contestants: Lieberman, veteran Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts and freshman Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. Each was able to amplify some part of the Gore story: Kerry the Vietnam years, Edwards the new moderate of the New South. Bush’s selection of Dick Cheney in some ways strengthened the hand of each: Kerry for his war record (Cheney had none), Edwards for his youth–and Lieberman for his Cheney-like maturity.
The moment of decision came last Sunday night. Gore met with his family and top aides in his top-floor suite at the Loews Vanderbilt Hotel in Nashville. In one room, Gore, campaign chairman Bill Daley, vetting chief Warren Christopher and brother-in-law Frank Hunger debated the virtues and deficits of the three. In the next room, at the same time, top consultants–each in the role of one of the finalists–played a political version of “spin the bottle.” Each time, the bottle ended up pointing to Lieberman. Then they did coin tosses, and Lieberman won again. The games were a joke, but eerily reflected the thinking in the other room. In the wee hours–after Gore’s wife, Tipper, arrived–the vice president made the final decision. “No divine intervention, I can assure you,” Lieberman said later. But he didn’t sound certain.
What took Gore so long? The campaign insisted that it did no polling on the question of how Lieberman’s Jewishness would play, but aides were familiar with public surveys on the matter, as well as Lieberman’s own data from his Senate races in Connecticut. They found what the NEWSWEEK Poll did, which was that the vast majority of voters–76 percent in the NEWSWEEK survey–consider the issue irrelevant. The real reason for the vice president’s hesitancy is that Gore also liked Edwards, a winsome, extremely successful trial lawyer who had been in Washington only two years–and who had beaten the GOP in a state the Gore campaign desperately needs to win.
As popular as Lieberman was with the conservative wing, the party’s base of workers, blacks and teachers was in need of reassurance. When Gore finally did pick him at 1 a.m., the calls went out at a furious pace in the early morning. A top campaign aide, Donna Brazile, called party people in the South. Bill Daley, brother of the mayor of Chicago, called Jesse Jackson–a fellow Chicagoan. Others called the teachers unions (which didn’t like his support for vouchers); Lieberman, who had challenged the concept of affirmative action, held a conference call with the Congressional Black Caucus. One key ally: Eleanor Holmes Norton of Washington, D.C., a fellow Yale student who had traveled to the South with Lieberman to sign up voters in 1963. “That kind of story gives him a lot of credibility,” said Norton. “He was there.”
In Austin, meanwhile, the Bush game plan was to tweak Gore about his relationship with Clinton and otherwise stay “on message.” Bush campaign guru Karl Rove is running the race he had hoped to run when he first sketched it out three years ago. Bush would campaign as close to the middle as he could, talking compassion, tolerance and a new approach to eradicating poverty through the power of hearts and markets. Bush and his advisers see no reason to change course now. They think they have ammo with which to attack Lieberman if they have to–his ties to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries in particular–but are happy to let Green Party candidate Ralph Nader do that job. “We’re running the race on their turf, which is what we hope to do from now on,” said Stuart Stevens, a top Bush media consultant.
With his sidekick chosen, Gore turned his attention to the convention and to his speech–an address far more important to him than Bush’s speech was to the GOP convention. The schedule is heavy with stars. On Monday the Clintons were to speak; on Tuesday, various Kennedys, led by Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg. In the end it will be up to Gore to sell himself in a speech that he is writing largely on his own–in part because his vast array of aides, some of them sniping at each other, have offered conflicting advice. “He’s got one last chance–only one–to reintroduce himself to people,” said a top Gore aide. “We can’t blow it.” And on that night he will be alone, without a witness to speak on his behalf. “I will take my case directly to the people, and introduce myself for who I am,” Gore said. And he might just want to offer a prayer–silently, if not out loud.
