Where's Al?

By Margaret Carlson/Washington

Al Gore is standing tall this week in his role as chief bureaucracy buster. Only three months ago, however, he was falling back on the self-deprecating humor that has seen many a Vice President through the insecurities of office. Early on the Saturday morning when David Gergen came on board, Gore was sitting in front of a computer trying to write a press release that would explain exactly what Gergen would be doing. The Vice President began to type: "We are delighted to have David Gergen joining us as Counsellor to the President. In addition to taking on the responsibilities of senior adviser for policy, he will be assuming the duties of the Vice President."

Each Vice President copes in his own way with playing second fiddle in an orchestra where first fiddle not only is the conductor but owns the concert hall. Gore employs humor (last month he gave Clinton a cardboard cutout of himself to take on vacation) and his innate best-student-in-the-class properties to make the most of his No. 2 role. As a result, Gore is rising above the usual stature of the office. Even Bill Kristol, Dan Quayle's former chief of staff, thinks Gore has "done pretty well. Maybe Democratic Vice Presidents get more clout, maybe because they're more egalitarian," he notes with a touch of irony. "And Gore is Clinton's generation."

Gore seemed relaxed in his role last week as he sat in his office, sipping tea while he assessed for TIME reporters his first eight months in office. His biggest surprise, he said, is the "unrelenting intensity of decision making. A typical CEO of a FORTUNE 500 company will have two to three gut-wrenching decisions a week to make. The President and Vice President will have six to eight such decisions every day," he said. "But there is no time in between for a sigh of relief."

As one would expect by dint of interest, Gore has been influential on environmental and technology issues. But he was also put in charge of the National Performance Review, often called "reinventing government," or "ReGo" for short. Any project with that many names was bound to be viewed initially as the domestic equivalent of being sent to a funeral in Thailand, but it has emerged as a strong leg in Clinton's economic tripod, along with health-care reform and the North American Free Trade Agreement. ReGo gained importance when Clinton cited its money-saving potential to members of Congress who were complaining about insufficient spending cuts in the budget package.

It is Gore's roving mandate, however, that differentiates him from past Vice Presidents. While Clinton may exaggerate in calling Gore "a full partner," the President often looks to him first and to greatest effect. (Initially, the press anointed the First Lady as a kind of co-President, but her involvement in health-care reform has kept her more narrowly focused than Gore.) Clinton often ends a meeting by turning to Gore and asking him what he thinks, giving him the opportunity to deliver the closing argument. Then they often walk out of the room together, heads nearly touching, giving Gore that all-important hallway time that is private and frank. It may help that at 45, Gore, who has served in Washington for almost 17 years, is a grownup in a house of tyros. "Any understanding of Al Gore has to come from the fact that he is the President's most senior adviser," says George Stephanopoulos, who has some titular claim to that status as the President's senior adviser for policy and strategy.

Unlike many previous Presidents and Vice Presidents who campaigned separately, Clinton and Gore bonded on the tour bus, creating a chemistry that seems to endure. Says Democratic political consultant Bob Squier: "They got to know each other so well that they came to talk in a shorthand only they could understand. You had to listen very closely to follow." Clinton even integrated his staff with Gore's to prevent White House infighting. Says Roy Neel, who served Gore before becoming a deputy chief of staff to Clinton: "The tension between the presidential and vice-presidential protectors, which has destroyed many a Vice President, never had soil in which to grow here."

So far, Gore's track record is decidedly mixed. He was able to get an international biodiversity treaty and to preserve funding for the space station. He worked out respectable compromises on the controversial timber and wetlands policies. In a fierce debate that lasted until two hours before the President was to deliver his Earth Day speech, Gore persuaded Clinton to include several tough proposals, among them a pledge to reduce greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by the year 2000.

But there have been major setbacks too. The high-tech investments in Clinton's economic-stimulus package "had Gore's fingerprints all over them," says an Administration aide, but the package did not survive. And Gore's influence was not enough to save the BTU tax from sniping by Senators and from Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen's willingness to carve out exceptions to it until there was nothing left. Budget Director Leon Panetta recalls, "When it was dropped in committee, there was a moment when I followed the Vice President into his office. He said it was a sad day."

Although the Vice President was never part of the Capitol Hill backslapping club, he was respected by most, and retains his power of persuasion there. One morning just as legislative director Howard Paster had got a difficult House Democrat on the line for the President, Gore walked in, took the phone and softened up the Congressman by reminding him of a fund raiser Gore had for him in 1988. Oftimes when congressional leaders call the Oval Office, Clinton uses the speakerphone and puts Gore on. In a walk-up to the first budget vote, Gore spent only five minutes to bag a Southern Senator that no one else had been able to move. The President joked that Gore was the person who, after others had tried, always managed to get the top off a jar.

Gore is often perceived as Cosmic Al, and indeed his office is a memorial to planet Earth, with one huge picture of the sphere hanging where the grip-and- grin photos usually are. But Gore has tethered himself to the ground: on top of his desk is a foot-high stack of three-ring binders filled with the obscure yet costly rules and regulations that he hopes to bring under control. At the moment, no aspect of procurement escapes Gore's memory. While some politicians speak in sound bites and some in windy paragraphs, Gore speaks at book length whenever possible. One of his favorite gigs -- Mop & Glo for short -- is an extended riff on the insanely complex specifications for a federal purchase.

"Let me read you this one thing about floor wax," he said during his TIME interview last week.

We already have this, a reporter replies.

"Do you have the aluminum-foil part?"

Yes.

"Listen to this requirement for the testing of 'finish, floor, nonbuffing.' 'Cut a two-and-one-half-inch square of aluminum foil of three millimeters thickness minimum, having one side mirror bright. Wash the square with alcohol and air dry. The mirror-bright side should give a spectrum that differs less than 2% transmittance from the standard front-surface test used in the specular reflectants accessory.' " A reporter interjects, "Why don't we do this later?" Gore says, "This will just take a second."

Five minutes later, after descriptions of eyedroppers and spectral photometers, there is hardly a wide eye in the room. This love of minutiae is an affection Gore shares with Clinton, but the President and Vice President cut different impressions. Clinton is a loose and easy presence; Gore jokes that he knows he is alive "because I hear myself creak every so often." Gone is the latent cutup who late at night during the campaign would plant his large wing tips on a plastic tray and surf from first to economy class during the takeoff of his plane, tossing out a chorus of James Brown's I Feel Good. He deals with the inevitable Wooden Al jokes by repeating them. "At a health- care meeting of 800 doctors," he says, rubbing his hands Jay Leno-like in his wing chair, "600 declared me dead."

While Clinton is a night owl, Gore goes to bed before Nightline and risesearly. Communications director Mark Gearan, who oversaw the vice- presidential selection process, said Gore's face went into free fall when Gearan told him that his meeting with then Governor Clinton about joining the ticket would begin at the Capital Hilton at 11:30 p.m., a good hour after Gore's bedtime. The Vice President says he has persuaded Clinton "to get more sleep."

In recent weeks, Gore is not seen so often standing zombie-like behind Clinton. But to launch what may be one of the projects by which this Administration is defined, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid will once again ride off together. Back on the bus, Clinton and Gore plan tentatively to go this week to Ohio, California and Texas, carrying tales of red tape and floor wax to people yearning to breathe free of bureaucracy.

With reporting by JAMES CARNEY/WASHINGTON