Gore Makes His Bid for the Presidency Official

In a surprisingly sharp-edged speech, Vice President Al Gore formally launched his bid for the presidency Wednesday with pointed criticism of his leading Republican rival and a pledge “to strengthen family life in America.”

Surrounded by about 5,000 supporters who squeezed into the square outside the Smith County courthouse, Gore both previewed arguments he likely would raise against Texas Gov. George W. Bush in a general election and tried to distance himself from President Clinton’s personal behavior.

Gore, 51, stressed the importance of a president setting a moral example “to guide our children.” But, along with the clear reference to the Clinton sex scandal, he signaled that he would attempt to frame the 2000 election as a choice between maintaining the Clinton administration’s economic policy or risking a return to the slowdown that drove Bush’s father from the White House in 1992.

“We remember what it was like seven years ago,” Gore declared in his 25-minute address. “And I never, ever want to go back.”

Under a cloudy sky on a warm and still morning, Gore spoke briskly and forcefully, if sometimes a bit breathlessly, in the small town where he spent his summers as a boy and still maintains an 88-acre farm. At one point, he was forced to shout over a small knot of protesters who blew whistles and accused the administration of blocking the distribution of drugs to treat AIDS in Africa. At another point, Gore delivered a paragraph of the speech in Spanish.

Though Gore never mentioned Gov. Bush by name, rarely has any candidate so directly targeted another contender in his announcement. Even as he echoed some of the same cultural themes as Bush, Gore aggressively sought to contrast himself with the Texan on issues and experience.

“This is about setting up the real choice,” said one senior Gore advisor.

In a rebuke of the “compassionate conservative” theme Gov. Bush has stressed, Gore said he wants to maintain prosperity “not by letting people fend for themselves, or hoping for crumbs of compassion, but by giving people the skills and knowledge to succeed in their own right.”

Karen Hughes, the Bush campaign’s communications director, said Gore’s comment about “crumbs” disparaged “the good work being done by good-hearted Americans across this nation” in the charities and community groups that Bush calls “the armies of compassion.” By contrast, she contended, Gore offered only “a long litany . . . of big-government solutions.”

In his remarks, Gore blended broad calls for cultural renewal with a list of specific policy goals. Much as Bush did during his inaugural campaign swing in Iowa and New Hampshire just days ago, Gore said society’s health could not be measured solely by economic prosperity. “For the issue is not only our standard of living but our standards in life,” Gore said.

Gore said that, while the nation has eliminated the federal budget deficit, it still faces cultural deficits: “the time deficit in family life; the decency deficit in our common culture; the care deficit for our little ones and our elderly parents.”

To respond to those challenges, Gore spelled out a series of policy initiatives. In education, for instance, he said he would push for making preschool universally available, reduce class sizes in all grades through high school and encourage stronger educational standards and accountability.

In social policy, he said he would seek to expand the Family and Medical Leave Act (which allows workers to take unpaid leave), increase access to after-school programs, expand the Clinton program that has sought to subsidize the hiring of 100,000 police officers, toughen gun control laws and increase partnerships between government and faith-based charities to deliver social services--an idea championed by Bush.

In economic policy, Gore promised to “balance the budget or better--every year,” to seek new free trade accords but also “to negotiate labor and environmental protections in those agreements,” to raise the minimum wage and to oppose any effort to “privatize” Social Security by diverting part of the payroll tax into individual investment accounts.

Gore touched only briefly on foreign policy, saying in the broadest terms that “America must lead the world, and we must always be strong enough to do so.”

In all this, Gore largely tracked the “New Democrat” policy direction that Clinton has set for his party.

The vice president twice praised Clinton by name--for his economic record and his decision to intervene in Kosovo. But in unmistakable terms, Gore distanced himself from Clinton’s illicit affair with Monica S. Lewinsky.

In the speech itself, Gore’s comments were somewhat indirect. He said parents must recognize “it is our own lives we must master if we are to have the moral authority to guide our children.” But in a series of interviews released Wednesday--with Diane Sawyer on ABC and with local reporters in Tennessee--Gore condemned Clinton’s behavior. “I felt that what the president did, especially as a parent, was inexcusable,” he told Tennessee reporters.

Gore has used comparable language to denounce Clinton’s behavior before, but his tone of exasperation with “the wasted time” and “the awful year” that the scandal produced was his most explicit yet.

Even more striking were Gore’s brushback pitches at Bush, the GOP front-runner. One of the sharpest came when Gore condemned those “who want to pass new protections for gun manufacturers to shield them from lawsuits.” In Texas, Bush has indicated he will sign legislation backed by the National Rifle Assn. to bar cities from suing gun manufacturers to recover the costs of gun violence.

In bidding to succeed Clinton, Gore is trying to cross surprisingly difficult terrain. In this century, only one sitting vice president has won election as president: Republican George Bush in 1988. Indeed, since 1900, only two other sitting vice presidents even claimed their party’s presidential nomination: Republican Richard Nixon in 1960 and Democrat Hubert H. Humphrey in 1968, both of whom lost close elections.

Gore is the heavy favorite to win the Democratic nod, but even as he focuses his fire on Bush he faces a challenge within the party from former Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey.

This will be Gore’s second White House bid--as a first-term senator from Tennessee, he jumped into the crowded 1988 Democratic presidential race. He never really found his footing in that contest, which was won by then-Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts.

Although Gore won reelection to the Senate in 1990, his national ambitions appeared largely eclipsed at that point. But those ambitions were given a second life when Clinton chose him as his running mate in 1992.

Throughout Clinton’s two terms, the president has given Gore an unusually visible role on issues such as the environment, urban policy, streamlining government and managing relations with Russia. Gore has also used his post to solidify his ties with key Democratic constituencies, such as organized labor and big-city mayors.

Politics suffused the atmosphere in which he was raised. The son of long-time U.S. Sen. Albert Gore Sr. of Tennessee, young Al Gore lived for most of the year in an elegant hotel in Washington. He was educated at an exclusive Washington private school and went to Harvard University, where he remained largely aloof from the student turmoil of the late 1960s.

After graduating in 1969 with a degree in government, Gore enlisted in the Army, even though he opposed the war in Vietnam.

In Vietnam, Gore served as an Army reporter with an engineering battalion stationed outside Saigon. When his tour ended, he joined the Nashville Tennessean newspaper as a reporter. He was elected to the House from an open Tennessee district in 1976. And in 1984, when veteran Sen. Howard H. Baker Jr. (R-Tenn.) decided to retire, Gore won the battle to succeed him.

Times staff writer Steve Fuzesi contributed to this story.

Hear Times political writer Cathleen Decker analyze the challenges facing Vice President Al Gore’s presidential campaign. Go to The Times’ Web site: https://www.latimes.com/gore

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Al Gore

Born: March 31, 1948, to the late U.S. Sen. Albert Gore Sr. and Pauline Gore.

Hometown: Washington, D.C.

Education: Bachelor’s degree in government, Harvard University, 1969. Attended Vanderbilt University Divinity School and Vanderbilt Law School.

Career highlights: U.S. Army (including service in Vietnam), 1969-71; reporter for the Nashville Tennessean, 1973-76; U.S. House of Representatives, Democrat from Tennessee, 1977-85; U.S. Senate, 1985-93; U.S. vice president, 1993 to present. Wrote “Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit.”

Family: Married to Mary Elizabeth “Tipper” (Aitcheson). Three daughters and a son.

Quote: “History makes no promises to keep the good times going in the absence of our own wise choices. It is all too easy to slide backward if we . . . allow ourselves to be seduced with eloquent words advancing harmful realities.”

Opening Bid

Vice President Al Gore launched his presidential campaign with criticism of his leading GOP rival. A22