Legal Woes Ebb, but Fund-Raising Flap’s Fallout May Still Hurt Gore

When the letter from Janet Reno landed, Vice President Al Gore’s advisors allowed themselves a momentary sigh of relief.

The day was October 3. The letter was the attorney general’s response to demands by congressional Republicans that she appoint a special prosecutor to investigate both President Clinton and Gore for their roles in the 1996 money chase.

The headlines about Reno’s letter were based on her decision to advance the investigation of Gore to the next formal stage--a 60-day preliminary inquiry. But the fine print pointed in the opposite direction. Reno swept away almost all of the Republican charges against Gore. All she left for further examination were the dozens of fund-raising phone calls the vice president has acknowledged making from his office.

Reno’s letter offered no hint whether she believed Gore’s calls met the threshold for appointing a prosecutor. But the law governing those calls--the “controlling legal authority,” as Gore once inelegantly put it--is sufficiently murky that some of the vice president’s closest advisors now believe Reno is unlikely actually to pull the trigger for an independent counsel when the 60 days expire on Dec. 3.

Reno’s letter might have been the best news in months for Gore. But it was immediately subsumed by the furor over the sudden White House release of videotapes recording the opening moments of Clinton’s celebrated White House coffees. The latest hurricane in the White House, in other words, obscured the slight parting of the clouds over Gore.

Therein lies a lesson. Gore’s legal exposure in the oozing campaign finance controversy may be receding. But his political exposure remains open-ended and, just as important, largely beyond his control.

Of course, Gore’s legal and political problems are not entirely unconnected. Nothing would create more sustained political headaches for him than a decision by Reno to appoint an independent counsel.

It is true that the appointment of a prosecutor is not necessarily fatal to Oval Office ambitions. George Bush won election in 1988, even though Lawrence E. Walsh was already poking through the Iran-Contra scandal. But Walsh’s investigation was aimed at the entire Reagan administration, not just Bush. A special prosecutor targeted precisely at the vice president could generate a thousand cutting headlines about the “Gore investigation.”

“It’s a huge difference,” said Ron Kaufman, a senior political advisor to Bush in 1988. “When the barrels are pointed four-square at your forehead it makes your palms sweat a whole bunch. And it’s different when it’s pointed at the administration or a bigger issue.”

Of course, after Reno’s letter, Gore’s odds of avoiding a prosecutor appear markedly improved. Reno dismissed the somewhat tortured Republican contentions that Gore’s fund-raising activities amounted to extortion. While Gore’s participation in a fund-raiser at the Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights last year may have been the most misguided encounter with Buddhism this side of Brad Pitt, Reno firmly concluded it did not violate any law.

All that is left are Gore’s phone calls. Republicans insist those calls violate the 1883 Pendleton Act, which bans soliciting contributions on federal property. But it is unclear whether that law applies to the president and vice president--and even more uncertain that it covers phone calls to donors who are not themselves on federal property.

Reviewing the law’s history, the Congressional Research Service was unable to find a single case where the Justice Department prosecuted an official for the sort of calls Gore made. Some conservatives said that the service did not look hard enough, but they have not found any cases either. As recently as 1995, the department chose not to pursue Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) after he acknowledged dialing for dollars from his office.

Though Reno is holding her cards closely, Gore’s defenders believe she is unlikely to seek a counsel to investigate behavior the Justice Department itself does not prosecute. Even Terry H. Eastland--a leading conservative scholar of the independent counsel law--said the signs are now “pointing away” from a Gore prosecutor.

Yet, even if Reno rejects an independent counsel, that may not bring the “closure” that the vice president’s advisors want. The reason is that Gore’s fate is inextricably bound to Clinton’s. And as long as questions continue to swirl around White House activities in 1996--as well as its response to the investigations since--Gore will remain vulnerable.

If history is any guide, the voters’ view of Clinton in 2000 will loom heavily over Gore’s hopes of succeeding him. No matter how hard he tries to demonstrate his independence, a vice president seeking the Oval Office can only separate so far from the man who put him a heartbeat away. Lyndon B. Johnson’s unpopularity was quicksand beneath Hubert H. Humphrey in 1968. Conversely, Reagan’s robust approval ratings boosted Bush in 1988. Dwight D. Eisenhower played a more ambiguous role in 1960, but his stratospheric ratings helped Richard Nixon stay within an eyelash of the formidable John F. Kennedy.

Those precedents frame Gore’s exposure in the fund-raising controversy. Relatively few voters may use his seemingly inevitable campaign in 2000 as an opportunity to specifically protest the Democratic money collection in the last campaign. But many are likely to view his candidacy as a referendum on the state of the nation after eight years of Clinton-Gore.

If Americans two years from now see the administration as energetic, effective and vibrant, Gore’s chances will rise accordingly. If they see it as tired, bereft of ideas and infested with scandal, he may become acquainted with the more unfortunate aspects of gravity.

At the moment, Clinton’s legacy to Gore still looks like a net positive--with a strong economy and a party repositioned in the center trumping the odor of scandal and a faint scent of complacency. But that balance can always change for the worse. And if the White House uncorks more disasters like the coffee-tape fiasco, it undoubtedly will.