Gore Has Chance to Step Out of Clinton’s Shadow

Al Gore will have the political stage to himself at next month’s Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, as President Clinton, a reluctant understudy, leaves town before the party’s new standard-bearer even arrives.

Clinton will depart soon after his opening night speech to delegates, according to convention plans to be announced today.

To underscore their changed roles--and their separation--the president and vice president will meet up outside California for a symbolic “handing of the baton,” as one planner put it, while Gore is en route to the convention city.

Once he arrives in Los Angeles, Gore will be showcased in a convention program mixing policy with a heavy dose of biography, including a series of this-is-your-life appearances by figures from Gore’s past.

The intent is to gracefully usher Clinton away from the national spotlight and begin to introduce Gore to a mass audience that, up to now, has known him mostly as the president’s dutiful deputy.

“It’s a particularly important time as Gore begins to emerge as a person with his own voice, talking about his own agenda, not as Vice President Gore but as Al Gore, Democratic candidate for president,” said a party strategist. “The convention will serve as a platform to illustrate, document and literally bring to life Al Gore’s personal story.”

The Democratic strategist, who has been intimately involved in the planning process, revealed details of the convention in advance of today’s official announcement.

To spice the program, speakers at the four-day event will include luminaries from the worlds of Hollywood and the Kennedy clan, as well as Gore’s wife, Tipper. In addition, Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton will speak in prime time during the opening night, Monday, Aug. 14.

The convention is designed to serve as a “symbolic stepping-off point” into the general election as well as the time Gore fully steps out from Clinton’s shadow, the strategist said.

There has been great sensitivity to the role Clinton will play in his would-be successor’s campaign. The president has indicated an eagerness to get involved and at one point cleared his schedule for the entire week of the convention, just in case he was requested.

However, aides to the vice president were just as eager to “give Clinton his due,” then see the president leave the convention--as President Reagan did for Vice President George Bush in 1988.

The event featuring Clinton and Gore seems an attempt to accommodate both desires. Unlike the two-ships-in-the-night way that Reagan and Bush passed one another at their convention, a more elaborate ritual is being planned for the two Democrats.

Clinton and Gore, who have rarely campaigned together this year, will stage a joint event the day after the president’s opening-night speech. The location has yet to be determined.

“They will meet up for a symbolic handing of the baton,” said the party strategist, who emphasized “the major difference [from 1988] is this won’t be done in the convention area but in a place outside California.”

In Los Angeles, the convention program will serve as a travelogue through the life of Gore, from his boyhood divided between Washington, D.C., and Carthage, Tenn., to his years in Congress and the vice presidency. Aides have been frustrated that most Americans, while familiar with the image of Gore standing stiffly at Clinton’s side, know little about his background or upbringing.

In an effort to flesh out his image, different people who have known Gore throughout his life will pop up at various points in the program, offering testimonials and flattering insights into his character.

Like the Republicans, the Democrats will aim to set a mostly positive tone at their carefully scripted convention and seek to bind the wounds from a bitter primary.

Former Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey, who lost in the Democratic primaries to Gore, will give a prime-time speech the second night of the convention.

(That is the same slot reserved on the GOP program for Sen. John McCain, the runner-up to Texas Gov. George W. Bush.)

While the Republicans will feature retired Army Gen. Colin L. Powell, Democrats will counter with their own political celebrities, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, who both will speak Tuesday night.

Schlossberg, the only surviving member of President Kennedy’s immediate family, will address the convention 40 years after her father accepted the Democratic nomination at the last convention held in Los Angeles.

Gore’s selection for vice president will address the convention Wednesday night and, in keeping with tradition, Gore will wrap up the convention with his acceptance speech Thursday night.

After the program ends, Gore will head to a gala fund-raiser in his honor at the Shrine Auditorium, where Barbra Streisand has promised to sing three songs.

And long before the podium at Staples Center has a chance to get cold, it will be put to use by another (fictional) Democratic leader played by Martin Sheen. The NBC-TV series “The West Wing” will use the convention set from midnight until 8 a.m. Friday for a future episode, the show’s producers and a DNC spokesman confirmed. The show will assume the cost of keeping the arena open for the evening.

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Times staff writer Amy Wallace contributed to this story.