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By Carl M. Cannon, Convention Daily
© National Journal Group Inc.
Monday, Aug. 14, 2000

As Al Gore prepares for the most important speech of his life Thursday night, he confronts a ghost that appeared four years ago at the Democratic convention in Chicago.

There, in what has become a staple in a major Gore speech, the Vice President drew on a family tragedy to make a point about public policy. In so doing, he moved the delegates to tears. But that wasn't all. Discerning listeners were haunted by the nagging suspicion that when Al Gore speaks, he's not always constrained by the facts.

That night in Chicago, Gore described going to the hospital to see his big sister, who began smoking at age 13, as she was dying of lung cancer at age 46. Gore knelt by her bed, took his hand in hers, and told her he loved her.

"Tomorrow morning, another 13-year-old girl will start smoking," Gore said softly. "I love her, too. Three thousand young people in America will start smoking tomorrow. One thousand of them will die a death not unlike my sister's, and that is why, until I draw my last breath, I will pour my heart and soul into the cause of protecting our children from the dangers of smoking."

The delegates' response was an emotional outpouring of applause. The press notices were not as kind. Was this the same Al Gore who in 1985 voted against cigarette tax increases? The same man who, while running for President in 1988, boasted to North Carolina farmers about growing tobacco on his family farm in Tennessee? The Al Gore who took money from tobacco political action committees until 1990?

Confronted with these inconvenient facts, Gore offered this rationale: "I felt the numbness that prevented me from integrating into all aspects of my life the implications of what that tragedy really meant."

It was a vague explanation that focused unwanted attention on the man who repeatedly used the phrase "no controlling legal authority" in a press conference about fund-raising calls he made from the White House. Today, the conservative press routinely calls Gore a liar. Three books by mainstream journalists document a host of instances in which he has exaggerated or offered revisionist history of his own record, and late-night comedians -- riffing off Gore's claims to have helped create the Internet -- know they can always get a laugh by ticking off some grand invention Gore claimed to have made.

Gore's rivals, Democrats as well as Republicans, have picked up on this theme. During the New Hampshire primary, Bill Bradley pointedly asked Gore: "Why should we believe that you will tell the truth as a President if you don't tell the truth as a candidate?" Republican nominee George W. Bush deflects Gore attacks with a shrug and the off-the-cuff observation that "Al Gore will say anything to win."

Chicago is where this perception really took hold. Gore supporters think that Los Angeles would be a good place to bury it. The question is whether Gore can alter his rhetorical style. Recently, he told an audience that health care in Texas is so bad that people cross the border into Mexico to try to find medical treatment. Here are some other claims:

He didn't know that his controversial Buddhist temple visit was a fund-raiser; he only attended one of the notorious $50,000-per-guest White House coffees; he never was opposed to abortion as a congressman; as a junior member of the House, he wrote the bipartisan arms control plan that U.S. negotiators took to the Russians; he wrote some of Hubert H. Humphrey's 1968 convention address; as a New Jersey Senator, Bill Bradley voted against flood relief for Iowa farmers; Bradley's plans to reform Medicare would leave blacks and Hispanics behind.

The last assertion was punctuated by a classic cheap shot: "Racial profiling was practically invented in New Jersey," Gore said.

In a new book chronicling these verbal circumlocutions, San Francisco newspaper columnist Debra J. Saunders calls such statements "the Gore Disconnect." But what accounts for it? His biographers, playing psychologist, tend to believe that the extravagant expectations put on Gore by his parents are to blame. President Clinton, on the other hand, once offered the observation that Gore is, by temperament, utterly disinclined to brag on himself. The implication is that because he is so naturally reticent when he tries to toot his own horn, he is awkward to the point of not sounding genuine -- or even honest.

This is clearly hurting Gore, and to his loyalists, it seems an unnecessarily self-inflicted wound. By all accounts, the Vice President is a serious, sober man who immerses himself in public policy issues and about whom, in private, there has never been a hint of impropriety, let alone scandal.

The public gets this part. Asked in a Princeton Research poll if Gore is "intelligent and well-informed," 77 percent of the respondents said yes, with only 17 percent disagreeing. But when asked whether Gore "says what he thinks, even if it's politically unpopular," 41 percent said yes, while 52 percent said no.

These questions about Gore's forthrightness seem to lead directly to doubts about his leadership. In a Fox News poll, only 26 percent said they know "a lot" of what Gore stands for.

Will Gore put these qualms and uncertainties to rest in his acceptance speech? "I can tell you this," replied one prominent California Democrat. "There are about 5,000 delegates who hope so."

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