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When Al Gore told the New York Times last weekend that "the pain of making the mistake in '96" had evoked "a passion for campaign-finance reform," I really wanted to believe him. For an assortment of reasons: I think that life is a process of learning from our mistakes (I've learned a lot); I enjoy seeing someone's thinking evolve (pass me the mirror); I'm a big believer in second chances (having had more than my share); and it's always great to have a new, high-profile convert to the cause.
But what makes the vice president's conversion so profoundly unconvincing is its timing. The epiphany coincided -- practically to the second -- with John McCain's departure from the race, leaving a key group of voters to be won over. Since McCain pulled the plug, Gore has been working relentlessly to grab the reform banner by making a pilgrimage to reform icon Jesse Ventura and painting himself -- over and over, ad infinitum, Al nauseam -- as McCain's brother-in-arms. "Like John McCain," said Gore, using a phrase we're going to hear a lot of, "I bring the passion that comes from personal experience to the battle for campaign-finance reform."
You'd think someone as "passionate" about campaign-finance reform as Gore would have put the issue front and center when he announced his candidacy in Carthage, Tenn., last June. After all, there are few things a politician gives more thought to than what to say upon declaring his intention to seek the highest office in the land. But when the vice president gave his defining speech, with a comprehensive rendering of his goals, he never once mentioned his new passion, campaign-finance reform. Not once. Not in English and not in the espanol he intermittently tossed in.
And it's not as if he was just hitting the highlights of his agenda. Here is only a partial list of the issues he addressed: the economy, unsafe schools, health care, abortion, the environment, the culture of violence, community policing, the Family and Medical Leave Act, mental illness, the "decency deficit," the minimum wage, handicapped people's rights, veterans' rights, good neighbors, terrorism and the soul of America. But still no mention of his passion.
The contrast with McCain's announcement speech could not have been starker: "When our government," McCain said in New Hampshire, "has been taken from us by the special interests, the big-dollar donors, pride is lost to shame. When our politics are corrupted by money and lies, trust is lost to cynicism .... Restoring honesty to our political system is the gateway through which all other policy reforms must pass." That's a real reformer speaking, one who can't help but issue a biting indictment of the current system -- a critique glaringly absent from Gore's shiny new faux reform protestations.
Not only did Gore fail to mention his passion for campaign reform in his announcement speech, it was also absent from his summing-up statements in his debates with Bill Bradley. Gore talked about extending our prosperity, revolutionizing education and providing high-quality health care to all -- but never once did he mention abolishing soft money or cleansing the system in Washington.
In fact, does Gore actually feel that he has been part of a broken system -- that the Buddhist temple fund-raiser, his infamous claim of "no controlling legal authority," and turning the White House into a Dialing for Dollars boiler room were manifestations of a systemic corruption? If he believes as much, he hasn't said so. But his inspiration John McCain never gave a speech without talking about it.
And all those mistakes happened four years ago. Why has it taken the vice president until now to embark on a crusade to clean up the system? Could it be that his plethora of pollsters were telling him in unison that campaign-finance reform wasn't even registering as a voter concern? Or is it that he didn't realize the error of his ways until the McCain phenomenon prompted some quick Electoral College math showing he could not capture the White House without first capturing the McCain voter?
Gore all but admitted as much when he said of campaign-finance reform: "I want to raise that banner higher. Not only because of the obvious political reason that I want to give a home for those voters who were strongly supporting Sen. McCain and Sen. Bradley because of that issue -- I acknowledge that's part of what's going on here. But also because I believe in it." Wow, feel that passion. Feel the subtext become the text. Feel the focus group become policy.
In any case, the word "mistake" must have focus-grouped through the roof because Gore used it at least 16 times in his interview over the weekend. Also making the VP's buzz word list: "reform" (7 mentions), "passion/passionate" (5 mentions), and "McCain" (5 mentions). Interestingly, the phrase "pandering poll" never crossed his lips. Must not have tested so well.
Gore's new reform strategy is bald-faced, brazen, utterly audacious -- and will probably work. George W. Bush -- so tied to that human roadblock to campaign-finance reform, Mitch McConnell, and so buried under his own avalanche of special-interest cash -- isn't going to be able to fake it on this issue. So, Gore may end up being crowned the new champion of campaign reform by default. It doesn't make him a reformer, but it could provide a happy ending of sorts for the tale of the Passion of St. Al.
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