Gore has a hard act to follow: his own. A superstar on the campaign trail, he helped transform a troubled ticket into a New Age dynamo. After the election he became a fixture around Little Rock with his early-morning jogs and high-profile huddling with Bill and Hillary over cabinet appointments. Aides burbled about how Gore had “bonded” with Clinton. But he has groused to friends that he was underemployed during the transition. In fact, he probably wielded more power than any vice president-elect in a comparable period. Two high-level appointees-Carol Browner at the Environmental Protection Agency and Laura Tyson at the Council of Economic Advisers-are there because Gore pushed for them.
Gore’s problem is that his ego is now bumping up against the shrinking reality of being vice president. However he shapes his role in the White House, he’s in for a letdown. On paper, the most natural fit for him is lobbying Congress. But the diffident Gore was a loner in the Senate, and an aide asks plaintively, “Who would you send up there to schmooze? Al Gore or Bill Clinton?” Clinton has talked about making Gore a kind of watchdog over the cabinet to assess what works and what doesn’t, “not to threaten the secretaries, but to keep them ginnin’,” Clinton told NEWSWEEK. That job would draw on Gore’s skills as a former newspaper reporter but would also make him as popular around the bureaucracy as a hall monitor. Clinton is likely to call on Gore to settle high-level disputes, with one aide envisioning the veep stepping in between Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen and Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala over Medicaid reform.
The environment is the most likely source of friction at the White House. For Gore, protecting the environment is a religion; for Clinton, it’s a trade-off that is often secondary. After Gore joined the ticket last July he flew to Little Rock for a round of briefings that included a mock press conference. Anticipating questions from reporters, an aide asked Gore about the charge that he is “an environmental extremist” whose views, if adopted, could cost American jobs. Gore launched into a typically earnest defense, reciting sections of his book, “Earth in the Balance.” Clinton looked on patiently, letting the response spin out to its lofty conclusion. “That was a really good answer,” he began tactfully. “But we need to come at it a little different. I don’t think we want to come across as Greenpeace warriors.” Gore didn’t miss a beat. “What do you mean we, kemo sabe?” he sassed. There was an awkward pause. After all, a vice president doesn’t typically talk back to the big guy. Then everyone laughed. Gore’s preaching about new cleanup industries was a running joke during Clinton’s economic summit. “I’d like a dime for everytime [Gore] said, ‘Tell us again how cleaning up the environment creates more jobs’,” says a Clinton adviser. “Sure we need more scrubbers and fuel-efficient cars, but it’s not so simple.”
Gore will diversify into other, less politically threatening areas. The Competitiveness Council that Dan Quayle headed as vice president will get the ax. But Gore will apply his longstanding interest in science and technology to shepherding a national fiber-optic network and other high-tech projects. He wants to reinvigorate the moribund United States Information Agency as an instrument of foreign policy through modern campaign techniques, including polling citizens in foreign countries to see what they think of America. “Watch Al,” says a longtime adviser. “Al will figure out a way to be important.”
Clinton promised that Gore would be a trusted adviser, and he has delivered on that commitment. But the extent of their personal bonding is part media fantasy, a result of watching one too many bus tours. Though they come across on television as more alike than any presidential ticket in memory, they are temperamental opposites. Gore is so disciplined that he has recently taken to reining in Clinton at photo ops, nudging the gregarious president-elect away from the press and toward the door. Though Gore is younger by two years, his body language stops just short of condescending, a little like an indulgent older brother toward a rambunctious sibling. Don’t look for Gore to join Clinton on the golf course. Gore thinks golf is “inefficient exercise,” says an aide.
Being vice president requires a different mind-set. Maybe Gore should take up golf and learn the luxury of not being center stage, of pacing himself for a prize that is of in the middle distance. Intellectually, Gore understands there is no such thing as a copresident. But emotionally he will have to learn to subjugate himself, which does not come naturally.
