Now, in the Roosevelt Room, they had the gall to sound concerned about Gore’s political predicament. They knew he was under pressure from unions and industry, who fear the economic cost of a strict global-warming treaty. They knew that Beltway handlers want him to dilute his green image as he prepares to run for president. As his friends, one of the environmentalists said, they wanted to suggest that a tough treaty would, in fact, be good politics. Gore cut him off. ““Don’t go down that road,’’ he warned icily. ““I am committed to this cause, and I am not going to decide what we should do based on whether it will get me elected.’’ The offender piped down.
Lesson: don’t offer to help a proud man who doesn’t think he needs it. Until now, Al Gore hasn’t. He is used to being at the top of his class, the kid who can square every circle, pacify every interest, win universal approval and see the Big Picture. A schoolboy star, he trusts his competence. Earnestly devout, he claims to measure himself by standards loftier than those of mere politics.
But Gore seemed to be practicing mere politics in California last week, cozying up to the entertainment industry, which shovels millions to the Democratic Party–but which has long distrusted him for supporting record labeling, TV ratings and the V-chip. ““Few industries in this nation care as deeply about social and ethical issues,’’ he cooed in a Hollywood speech. Gore went on to praise the industry’s willingness to depict lesbians favorably. ““When the character of “Ellen’ came out,’’ he told an audience of broadcasters, ““millions of Americans were forced to look at sexual orientation in a more open light.''
Gore was touching on an explosive topic, though he told NEWSWEEK he hadn’t intended to generate controversy. But he shouldn’t have been surprised. The ““Ellen’’ story line this season is focusing on gay issues–and the show’s ratings are up. The lead, played by Ellen DeGeneres, an openly gay comedienne whose character came out in an episode last April, has been depicted giving a deep, joking kiss to a heterosexual friend–a plot development that prompted ABC to post a ““parental warning’’ on the show. In an upcoming episode, Ellen will hold hands with a female friend and then head off to a bedroom with her.
The reference to ““Ellen’’ was not in the first draft of Gore’s speech. But aides insisted that neither they nor Gore took special note of the decision by a speechwriter to include it in a later version. The matter was not so casual to conservatives. They were, predictably, outraged. Gore was ““way out of the mainstream,’’ declared Randy Tate of the Christian Coalition. Privately, they were more analytical. ““He knows he’s going to have a primary,’’ said a leading GOP pol. ““He’s going to need the gays’ money and votes.’’ Indeed, gay activists praised Gore’s speech. He’s ““far more in touch with the vast majority of Americans’’ than the religious right, said Elizabeth Birch of the Human Rights Campaign. DeGeneres said she was ““thrilled.''
Gore has been feeling the heat–and not just about global warming and gays in prime time. Now that he’s running for president, it’s not clear, based on this year’s evidence, whether he has the savvy to take the next step. He mangled his first explanation of his role in the fund-raising scandal. He got snookered into an embarrassing photo op with the Chinese in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. He faces growing questions–and a Justice Department probe–into his campaign calls. His poll numbers for honesty and integrity have fallen.
There is both peril and promise in his next test: global warming. Once the province of techno-geeks, the greenhouse effect is about to become Topic A. For Gore, the stakes could not be greater. It’s an issue that he has studied and cared about for 30 years. In his 1992 best seller, ““Earth in the Balance,’’ Gore wrote that global warming, left unchecked, would lead to an ““environmental holocaust.''
This week, after years of coaching from Gore, the president is expected to announce the U.S. proposal for a worldwide treaty. The accord, to be negotiated in Kyoto in December, would prescribe enforceable limits on the emission of the ““greenhouse gases’’–carbon dioxide and methane–that trap heat on earth. Failure to act, the president will say, could produce vast disruptions in the patterns of weather, crops and disease. But tough limits could raise the price of burning coal, natural gas and petroleum, and cost American jobs. Blending ““greens’’ and ““browns’’ won’t be easy. And though Clinton will do the talking, Gore will probably get the credit–or blame.
How Gore balances two lifelong concerns–saving the world and getting elected–could become the central drama of his career. Key parts of the Democratic coalition, particularly labor unions in industrial states, see a global-warming treaty as a dire threat. A study for the United Mine Workers, for example, predicts a loss of 1.6 million jobs. But environmentalists say that if Gore flinches now, he will destroy the credibility he’s built up over decades. ““This is the ball game,’’ says John Adams of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Environmental armies are not vast. But they could damage Gore if they choose to testify against him in the court of public opinion.
Gore’s passion on the topic is genuine. He learned lessons on the farm where he spent each summer of his youth. Among them: gullies left untended drain topsoil away in a storm. At Harvard he fell under the spell of the late Roger Revelle, a brilliant oceanographer with a presciently holistic view of environmental issues. When Gore came to Congress in 1977, Revelle was the first witness at his first hearing.
As Revelle educated Gore, Gore educated Clinton. One day in early 1993, the new veep marched into lunch with the president carrying a huge folding chart–his now familiar graph that predicts frightening increases in atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels. The First Pupil was initially skeptical. ““I was convinced that he was convinced it was real,’’ Clinton joked. But Gore kept at it, usually at the regular Friday lunch. It was at one such meal in the spring of 1995 that Gore led Clinton past a key milestone. He carefully explained the significance of a pledge the United States was about to make in Geneva: to a worldwide treaty that would mandate ““specific targets and timetables’’ for reducing greenhouse gases. Clinton gave the go-ahead.
But environmentalists fret that Gore has since wavered. There was, first, the distraction of the 1996 campaign–and the fund-raising questions that followed. Even after the election the White House did little to seriously make its case for what will be a controversial proposal. Last summer the Senate voted 95-0 to issue a warning: it won’t approve a treaty that poses a grave threat to the U.S. economy or that exempts developing nations such as China, India and Mexico. Treaty opponents followed the vote with a $13 million ad campaign designed to kill support for the measure before it could build.
The carping by megagreens notwithstanding, Gore is working hard behind the scenes to salvage a credible proposal to present to the world. He’s fought polite but intense battles with economic skeptics in the administration, led by Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and his top deputy, economist Lawrence Summers. When Gore found out that Summers and other browns were meeting privately with the president, Gore raced into the Oval Office, took a chair and glowered at his foes. He’s been working for months, NEWSWEEK has learned, to win a pledge of cooperation from the Chinese, whose leader, Jiang Zemin, visits Washington next week. Gore wants them to promise to eventually reduce their greenhouse emissions in return for generous financing to purchase American technology that will help them meet those goals.
Gore sounds eager for the challenge of selling whatever deal Clinton signs off on. The vice president is an optimist about the power of technology. It’s his secular faith: technology, he says, will provide new ways to produce clean, cheap energy. Then the United States can sell solutions to problems we’ve helped create. Gore was cheerful as he hiked a Montana mountain to view a receding glacier last month. Afterward, he assured an environmentalist friend on Air Force Two of his resolve. ““We’ve been together a long time, my friend,’’ said Gore. ““We’ve got to get this done.’’ If Gore wants to reach the political summit, however, the journey has just begun.
