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Gore shakes things up Searching for That Missing TwangBy Rick Horowitz "Washington, Hypothetically -- In an effort to meet budget spending caps and reenergize the federal workforce, President Al Gore announced today that the White House will be moving to Pocatello, Idaho..." "Responding to a series of threatening developments in the Persian Gulf, Mr. Gore challenged Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to 'a bunch of debates...'" "The president also announced that all high-ranking administration officials will be required to wear brown suits and 'listen to the heartbeat of America.'" Can you smell it? The gentle whiff of desperation? It's a Veep in vapor lock, and it's not a pretty sight. The money isn't flowing the way money's supposed to be flowing; it's pouring out as quickly as it's coming in. And the poll numbers? The poll numbers are double-ugly. Bush over Gore? Still a landslide. Gore over Bradley? Antsier every minute. Don't just stand there -- do something! He did something. The campaign is going south. (We're talking geographically.) The Veep says he's moving his lumbering, stumbling operation "lock, stock and barrel" to Nashville. "Closer to the grass roots," he explains. "Out of the Beltway and into the heartland." "From K Street to the aisles of Kmart." At least he's not running out of cliches. The Veep also admits -- at long last, in public -- that he has a living, breathing rival for the Democratic nomination, and that this rival has a name. The Veep actually spoke the name, and challenged his rival to get it on: podiums at ten paces. Debates on this, debates on that, debates on everything else. What you've got here is your classic "Wait a Minute!" moment. The tide was moving away from Earnest Al to Nearly As Earnest Bill, and that tide was threatening to become a rip tide, fast and fatal. Gore had to make it stop, had to do something -- anything -- to hold people in place for a while, to keep them from leaving. So he's leaving. He'll pack up his troubles in his old kit bag and twang, twang, twang. Sort of. Al Gore the presidential candidate is still Al Gore the Vice President of the United States. The home office of the United States government is still Washington, DC. So Mr. Suddenly Folksy will be doing a bit of commuting. His campaign staff, though? All 53 gazillion of them? It'll be Nashville or nothing -- and that's part of the plan, too. The Gore campaign has so many top-rung talents on its bloated payroll that the egos keep tripping over one another in the hallway. But Gore can't quite bring himself to give any of them the ax. Relocation, on the other hand... Not all of these high-tone Washington types will want to uproot themselves and go a little bit country, not even for a noble cause like Gore 2000. Some of them -- that's the hope, anyway -- will opt to stay behind, even if it means giving up that fat paycheck. Why fire the employees when you can move the company? Just another example of creative thinking from the candidate. If this presidential thing doesn't work out, Gore's definitely got a future in personnel management. And speaking of presidential things, there's one more major benefit the Veep grabs up in moving out of Washington: He'll be out of Bill Clinton's shadow. As long as Gore is within hug-and-handshake distance of the Big Guy, his people whisper, he'll always be tarred with the Big Guy's negatives. Move him hundreds of miles away and voters will start to see him as his own man, with his own appeal. So the Veep gets uprooted, and the Veep's leaner-if-not-meaner campaign gets uprooted, and now they'll have to spend the next few weeks moving into new offices and finding new places to live and to eat and -- Wouldn't it be simpler just to ship Clinton to Nashville? Posted 10/1/99. Fresh
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Rick Horowitz