Beginning Of The End
Al Gore and George W. Bush jumped the gun last week, ramping up their presidential campaigns well ahead of the traditional Labor Day starting line.
Logging thousands of miles hop-scotching around the country, message machines going full blast back at campaign headquarters, the candidates fought to move their best issues to center stage.
Gore stuck with one issue all week – health care – emphasizing his Medicare prescription drug plan and charging Bush with empty promises unsupported by policy specifics.
Bush, for his part, made his 100th, 101st and 102nd school visits, and fired back at the vice president, saying Gore's education plan lacked details.
Most of the political pros awarded the week to Gore.
Nonpartisan analyst Charles E. Cook, Jr., editor of The Cook Political Report, says "Bush has been off his game." For the first time in six months, Cooks thinks the Gore campaign is "dictating the dialogue of the race, where they're talking and Bush is responding."
Republican strategist Scott Reed, who managed Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign, says, "Gore's a little feistier since his convention ... he's put the Bush campaign on the defensive for a couple days in a row."
Coming out of the Labor Day weekend, Gore and Bush are effectively tied in the polls, which is where most political analysts say they expected them to be. But there have been some surprises.
Stephen Hess, a Brookings Institution election expert, is struck by the "degree to which Al Gore came out of his convention as a born-again populist."
Hess says Gore "seems to see something Bush doesn't see." Hess admits he doesn't see it either. He thinks Gore's David and Goliath rap – taking on giant corporate interests on behalf of the little guy – is an "awkward strategy," out of step with the "tenor of the times."
By criticizing the drug, health insurance and oil industries, Hess says Gore is "doing it with an epee rather than a broadsword, if you will. But the theme seems to be those left behind," even though most Americans, he says, are actually experiencing a surge of optimism.
Republicans are skeptical that tapping into anger is a smart strategy for Gore. The vice president developed his "fighter" character at primary season campaign stops where his speechifying was often perceived as over-the-top and shrill.
Former Republican National Committee chairman Rich Bond thinks Gore's populist strategy is intended to neutralize Green Party candidate Ralph Nader.
"If they feel they've flattened Nader, they will abandon it," says Bond.
Since the Democratic convention, Nader's standing in the polls – which had topped 5 percent in Oregon, Washington and California – has begun to recede.
Cook will be watching closely where the dust settles around Gore/Nader after Labor Day.
"Does Nader ride back up after the Democratic [covention] bounce is over? I think that is awfully, awfully important," Cook says. "If Nader's at 4 to 8 percent, Gore can't win. If he's at 1, 2, maybe 3 percent, Gore can win."
The Gore bounce got the attention of Republicans, too, who may have shot their silver bullet – the Buddhist temple video – a little too soon, releasing a TV ad Friday which includes a video montage Gore's most notorious missteps.
While the campaigns are expected to continue to focus on health care, Social Security, taxes and education, other issues could come to the fore in the next two months.
Cook thinks "we are going to hear more about the Supreme Court in October than in any election we've ever had." He believes more and more voters understand that the next president will likely fill a few seats on the high court, and that the justices could make landmark decisions on several major issues, most notably abortion rights.
"I hear a lot of women who say, 'I don't particularly like Al Gore but I'm going to vote for him because of the Supreme Court.'"
Democratic pollster Peter Hart thinks guns and violence will get a more thorough airing, while Bond says the month-long September congressional session is a "potential liability" for both candidates.
A White House confrontation with Congress "puts Clinton back in charge at a bad time for Gore." While for Bush, the booby trap is those pesky congressional Republicans, "some of whom," Bond allows, "can be politically insensitive."