Some See Expediency Not Principle as Gore’s Guide : Politics: Admirers say he offers new solutions, but critics charge that he often waffles on issues.

For the past several years, Sen. Al Gore (D-Tenn.) and his wife, Mary Elizabeth (Tipper), have been publicly identified with a national crusade for warning labels on sexually explicit rock ‘n’ roll lyrics. Yet contrary to their reputation, the Gores are not pariahs to the recording industry.

In fact, Gore received generous contributions from the recording studios during his 1990 Senate campaign, and his wife has helped the industry defeat music censorship legislation in several state legislatures.

To critics of the soon-to-be Democratic vice presidential nominee, Gore’s little-known rapprochement with the record industry is evidence of what they see as his habit of presenting himself as a man of principle while at the same time trimming his views to conform with political expediency.

As a member of Congress with an undisguised ambition to be President, Gore has sometimes challenged party orthodoxy on issues such as strategic defense, abortion and the environment in a way that some of his colleagues have interpreted as waffling or publicity-seeking.

“The more people see, the more they are going to see him for what he is: a blow-dried politician who cares more about sound bites than substance,” predicted Torie Clarke, spokeswoman for President Bush’s reelection campaign.

But Gore’s admirers contend that what his Republican critics see as temporizing is actually an effort on his part to fashion new, innovative positions for himself and the Democratic Party and an effort to propose fresh solutions to traditional political problems.

“His approach to issues is very thorough and very enlightened,” said Sen. Charles S. Robb (D-Va.). “He doesn’t do anything without doing his homework. He’s one of the few officials today who really tries to understand complex issues.”

A longtime Gore observer, who declined to be identified, added: “Al Gore has a history of looking over the horizon, seeing what’s going to be the hot topic in the future and doing his homework in advance. When other politicians get there, they find Al Gore has already staked out a position.”

As a result of Gore’s inclination to experiment with new ideas, Democrats predict that he would likely have more influence on Bill Clinton than most vice presidents have had in the past, if their ticket succeeds in November.

“I’ve got a lot to learn from him,” Clinton said earlier this week, referring to Gore. “He knows a lot.”

Still, as Gore’s record in Congress suggests, he would likely approach matters that come before him as vice president in his own unique way: with proposals designed to minimize controversy and maximize publicity.

As a politician, Gore, 44, son of former Sen. Albert Gore Sr., appears to be driven by a desire to avoid the mistakes of his father. The elder Gore, a firebrand populist who seldom yielded to compromise, was defeated in 1970 in an election that left a lasting impression on his son. The loss was interpreted as a repudiation of the elder Gore’s brazen political style.

In circumstances where Gore’s father would have stood on principle, the son looks for a middle ground. Where his father would have focused on the controversies of the day, the son looks ahead to future issues. And in non-election years, when his father would have stayed in Washington to concentrate on national affairs, young Gore makes frequent trips back home to keep in touch with his constituents.

Gore’s approach to politics also reflects the breadth of his education and his early experience as a journalist. After attending the premier private schools in Washington, he graduated with honors from Harvard University in 1969, served in the Army during the Vietnam War and worked as an investigative reporter for the Nashville Tennessean newspaper before being elected to the House in 1976.

In Congress, Gore has approached political problems with the thoroughness of an investigative reporter.

In the House, where he served until 1986, Gore indulged his reportorial instincts by holding highly-publicized investigative hearings. His efforts produced legislation limiting the sale of bogus insurance policies to senior citizens and another bill establishing nutritional standards for infant formula sold in the United States.

When he tackled the issue of arms control after moving to the Senate in 1987, he set aside eight hours a week for 13 months to study the subject and talk to experts. As a result of his studies, he took a leadership role in fashioning the Democratic alternative to President Ronald Reagan’s reliance on multiwarhead nuclear missiles.

Sen. Jim Sasser (D-Tenn.) says he thinks that Gore’s background in journalism also gave him an edge when it came to gaining public attention for his ideas. “He knows how to fashion the issues in such a way that they are appealing to the media,” Sasser said.

One Tennessee newspaper reporter recalls that after he covered an event involving Gore, the senator inquired whether he was going to write a story about it. When the reporter replied that he was, Gore responded: “Shall I call the city desk and tell them it’s coming?”

Gore’s flare for publicity shone through during a 1985 hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee that focused on rock music lyrics. Tipper Gore testified on behalf of the Parents Music Resource Center, which had taken a high-profile stand against lewd lyrics. Her husband offered moral support from his seat on the dais, agreeing with witnesses who agreed with his wife.

To those who attended, the hearings will long be remembered as one of the most brazen efforts on the part of any committee to generate news coverage. Pop music stars Frank Zappa and John Denver testified in defense of the music industry, and a consultant was employed to read the controversial lyrics into the record.

Largely as a result of the hearings, the record industry agreed to voluntarily place warning labels on violent, drug-promoting and sexually explicit rock songs, and many states considered imposing mandatory censorship.

The hearings also created the image of Gore as an advocate of family values--an image that has endured to this day, even though the senator and his wife toned down their criticism of the recording industry somewhat when they sought entertainment industry support for Gore’s unsuccessful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988.

In October, 1987, as the presidential campaign was beginning, the Gores held a private meeting with recording industry executives in which Tipper Gore called her most strident anti-rock statements “a mistake that sent the wrong message.” Her husband apologized for his role in the hearings, and the couple assured record industry officials that they never intended to advocate mandatory censorship.

When the entertainment newspaper Variety obtained a transcript of the meeting, the Gores were embarrassed by the implication that they were backing down on their stand against lewd lyrics for political reasons.

The Gores now realize that their crusade was probably mishandled from beginning to end. “It wasn’t communicated effectively,” a Gore aide said.

Since that 1987 meeting, Tipper Gore has assisted record industry officials in battling efforts in 22 state legislatures to censor rock lyrics. In fact, she appeared at a news conference in 1990 in support of then-Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer’s decision to veto a bill that would have censored rock lyrics.

“She has turned the corner a bit,” said Bob Garcia, national director of A&M; Records and president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. “I don’t think she’s the ogre gobbling up the music industry with threats.”

In his 1990 reelection race, Gore received $64,700 from Hollywood and the recording industry.

A more successful example of Gore’s style of politics was his approach to strategic weapons and arms control during the late 1980s. After devoting hours of study to the matter, Gore joined a few other like-minded members of Congress with the goal of persuading Reagan to change his approach to strategic weapons.

Gore’s proposal called for limiting deployment of the multiwarhead MX missile, developing the single-warhead, mobile Midgetman missile and negotiating a new arms reduction treaty with the Soviet Union.

“It was very controversial,” recalled Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), who supported the proposal. “What we said to the Reagan Administration was: ‘We will help you on modernization of our strategic defenses if you take a more traditional approach on arms control.’ ”

Like most of Gore’s work on issues, his advocacy of the Midgetman had a political as well as a policy purpose. It was intended to demonstrate that Democrats were not anti-defense, as Reagan contended. While many liberal Democrats opposed the missile, even his opponents on the issue, such as Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), grew to admire Gore’s devotion to the subject.

“I remember sitting with him for an hour or more in his office as he explained it, going through the whole survivability and stability argument,” Levin said. “Of all the people who worked on it, he far and away surpassed everyone in his understanding of it.”

Although the fledgling Midgetman missile program eventually succumbed to defense budget cuts, Levin noted that Gore’s emphasis on the stability created by single-warhead missiles “is where we are heading now “ in negotiations with Russia and the former Soviet republics.

When President Bush called on Congress last year to support U.S. military involvement in the Persian Gulf, Gore responded as usual by taking a middle course. He voted in favor of U.S. intervention, but defended fellow Democrats who voted against it.

Friends and colleagues recall that Gore agonized for many days over his decision. “It was a real vote of conscience,” Sasser said.

But in the final analysis, Gore’s vote in favor of the war was seen by many of his critics in the Senate as an effort to avoid criticism from voters in Tennessee and to position himself for a possible challenge to Bush in 1992.

Gore’s more recent emphasis on environmental issues reflects the same impulse that he displayed with Midgetman: to grasp the complexities of an important issue and turn it to his political advantage.

It has already paid dividends, earning him a leadership role at the environmental summit in Rio de Janeiro last month and raising his political profile at a time when Clinton was searching for a running mate.

Yet Gore-watchers see in his environmental crusade a sign that he is moving away from his penchant for blazing the politically easy path. In the introduction to his new book, “Earth In The Balance,” he said that while he has previously approached issues with an eye toward political expediency, he has decided to take a different tack on the environment.

“I have become very impatient with my own tendency to put a finger to the political winds and proceed cautiously,” Gore wrote. “. . . The integrity of the environment is not just another issue to be used in political games for popularity, votes, or attention. And the time has long since come to take more political risks--and endure much more political criticism--by proposing tougher, more effective solutions and fighting hard for their enactment.”

Even so, while Gore recently angered his constituents by speaking out against pollution caused by wood chip mills located along the Tennessee River in Chattanooga, he has yielded to home-state interests in the past on a few crucial environmental matters.

For example, he supported the Tennessee Valley Authority’s controversial Clinch River breeder reactor project and the Tellico Dam, which threatened the endangered snail darter.

Abortion is another issue where Gore has sought to reconcile both sides. While insisting that he supports the right to abortion, Gore has consistently voted against federal funding for abortions. He has explained his position by saying that he could not justify the expenditure of scarce tax dollars on a medical procedure as controversial as abortion.

Clearly, Gore has occasionally allowed both sides in the abortion debate to think he supports their view. In a letter to an anti-abortion constituent in May, 1987, Gore wrote that abortion is “arguably the taking of human life”--a view held by the opponents of abortion.

Asked to reconcile the gist of the letter with Gore’s publicly stated support for abortion, aides insist he was simply expressing the view that abortion is a distasteful choice. They said he did not mean to imply that he would support restrictions on privately funded abortions.

Times staff writers David Savage and Stephanie Grace contributed to this story.