It’ll Be Gore, Yawn, Over, Yawn, Bradley

Six months away from the New Hampshire primary, the race for the Democratic presidential nomination is, for Al Gore, heading away from the Kodak moment he yearned for and toward the Excedrin headache he dreaded.

Former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley announced his candidacy for the nomination last week against the backdrop of a Boston Globe poll in New Hampshire showing him statistically tied with the vice president.

Gore, already swimming upstream in a river of dullness and wearing the albatross of Bill Clinton like a turtleneck, now faces a credible opponent.

Hardly a national political figure of much consequence since his election to the U.S. Senate in 1978, Bradley still has emerged as a surprisingly strong challenger. Though the monotoned and avuncular Bradley can make even Gore look sporty, he’s attracted a wide spectrum of Democrats. The Bradley campaign also is achieving near parity with Gore in fund-raising--a critical element of tactical infrastructure in any presidential campaign.

Nevertheless, Democratic party activists will emerge from their Los Angeles convention next summer with what they feel is the best of both worlds: a Gore-Bradley ticket. And though “Gorely” hardly rises to the liberals’ dream team, they will be formidable tests for Republicans a year from now.

Having given away the plot, here’s a look at the story that got us there.

Albert Gore: This son of privilege (raised in a posh Washington, D.C., hotel) and failed 1988 presidential campaigner today benefits from the enormous advantage of campaigning as a sitting vice president. For seven years, Gore has traveled the nation gathering chits from every part of the Democratic coalition. Though his mien is less convincing, Gore still gets an A+ from Professor Clinton in the art of pandering, which serves him well as he stitches together his political quilt of minorities, unionists and the Democratic left.

It will be hard if not impossible for loyal Democrats to cut and run from a vice president whose own loyalty has been sterling. Partisans will attach much credit to Gore for his description of Clinton, on the very same day he was impeached, as one of our greatest presidents. Support for his candidacy will flow from the notion that he has earned it for not jumping ship in the storm. It won’t hurt either when he arrives at each rally in a gleaming Air Force jet--a display of pomp and majesty Bradley can’t match.

On the downside is Gore’s laughable Throttlebottom portrayal, which lends to rich ridicule. The man who claimed to have invented the Internet, confused Michael Jackson with Michael Jordan, asserted that a “leopard can’t change its stripes” and thought a letter of protest regarding the Amtrak eagle in Texas referred to an endangered bird . . . well, it’s hard to take a doofus like that seriously. The political stew for Gore becomes even less tasty when you throw in a variety of extremist left-wing positions he’s spouted over the years.

But the vice president is a shrewd plodder, a determined gut-fighter, a proven campaigner and an ambitious climber who will cut and slash to reach his goal. Republicans will get more than one good chuckle out of Gore’s clown show, but being Jay Leno’s favorite bozo will not cost him the nomination.

Bill Bradley: The main thing going for Bradley is that he is not attached at the hip to our pain-feeling and pain-inducing president. Bradley combines as well the ability to match touchy-feely liberal rhetoric with genuine outreach to diverse working-class audiences in his party. Independents--who can vote in many Democratic primaries--find him attractive because, by appearance, he fills no predictable mold. Though a world-class fund-raiser, he still rails about campaign financing--for cynical reformists, an appealing contrast to Mr. Raise-Money-at-the-Buddhist-Temple.

On the downside, this ex-New York Knick’s message limning a grand vision for America has thus far been the equivalent of an airball. His flip-flops on tax cuts and school choice along with his loud opposition to welfare reform will provide juicy targets for Gore and the political press. And his biggest problem remains that he cannot match Gore’s claim to the mantle of incumbency--a nearly insurmountable obstacle in our primary system.

It won’t be a walk in the park for Gore, but he still wins it. Get used to “Gorely 2000.”

Kenneth L. Khachigian is a veteran political strategist and former White House speech writer who practices law in Orange County. His column appears here every other week.