The Secret Passion of Al Gore

That was not the only time Gore's pitch for force carried the day. In mid-1995, as a frustrated Clinton agonized over air strikes in Bosnia, Gore described photos of a Srebrenica woman who had hanged herself in despair and how they had haunted Gore's 21-year-old daughter. What Karenna Gore couldn't understand, the Vice President said, was why the U.S. was not doing more. At that moment the decision crystallized to make the U.S. bombing threat a real one. "We've got to try something," the President concluded. Giving war a chance helped push all sides to the peace table in Dayton.

Though Madeleine Albright is the public face of the idea that moral impulses should be backed up by military force, no one has done more than Gore to drive home that approach within the White House. "President Clinton consulted with him at every turn," former Secretary of State Warren Christopher recalls. "The Vice President was usually the last person he talked to before reaching a foreign policy decision." Which is not a bad place to be when you are trying to persuade the ever persuadable Clinton. Says Bill Richardson, the Energy Secretary and former U.N. Ambassador: "He comes in at the end, summarizes, moves the President his way."

Christopher, who organized the vice-presidential search, says Gore's expertise on foreign policy was a major reason why he ended up on the ticket. Gore came from the hawkish wing of his party, having broken with most Democrats to vote in favor of the Gulf War. And unlike Clinton, he served in Vietnam. Gore set his fix on world affairs early in his political career, though it was not an obvious area for a junior Congressman elected from the plateau of Middle Tennessee. Even on the environment, Gore's signature issue, the questions that stirred his passions most were global warming and ozone depletion.

For more than a year in the early 1980s, Gore cleared eight hours a week on his schedule to study arms control, wheedling the country's premier experts to give him tutorials and ultimately making his mark in the nuclear debate with an idea for the single-warhead missile to stabilize the arms race. Leon Fuerth, a former foreign-service officer who landed on the staff of the House Intelligence Committee, oversaw his education and has remained with Gore since--making Fuerth a force in his own right in the Clinton White House and the presumptive favorite for National Security Adviser in a Gore Administration.

Under Clinton, Gore has eagerly taken on entire portions of the foreign policy agenda deemed not quite worthy of--or newsworthy enough for--the President's full attention. At the center of Gore's foreign policy portfolio are the four bilateral commissions he established with Russia, South Africa, Egypt and Ukraine. The relationships are credited with solving some leftover cold war problems, such as persuading Ukraine to give up its nuclear missiles. They also involve the care and feeding of the ascendant leaders Gore would be dealing with as President.

The relationship that matters most right now is the one he began six years ago with former Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, his partner on what was called the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission. The two tackled tricky trade disputes (over frozen chicken legs, for one), worked out arrangements for cooperation in space, negotiated safeguards on plutonium and lunched over hot dogs and sauerkraut at Katz's Deli in New York City. Gore put such faith in Chernomyrdin that at times it seemed a blind spot. When the CIA produced a report offering what it called "conclusive evidence of [Chernomyrdin's] personal corruption," the Vice President's office returned it with a barnyard epithet scrawled across the cover, according to a New York Times report last November. (Gore's spokesman refuses to comment.) Now that confidence may be repaid. Chernomyrdin, in the role of Kosovo envoy for Russian President Boris Yeltsin, is a key player in the search for a diplomatic end to the war. During Chernomyrdin's visit to Washington this month, most of the talking took place around Gore's dining-room table.

For a political team that came into office arguing that it was "the economy, stupid," it is hard to see how foreign policy will be much of a plus for Gore in 2000--even against a Texas Governor who has referred to "Grecians" and "Kosovians." When Gore has received attention overseas, it has usually been the kind he didn't want. His badly executed 1997 trip to China produced a series of embarrassments, culminating in a clumsy toast with Premier Li Peng, who had been blamed for the massacre of student protesters at Tiananmen Square. And the greater a role Gore takes in fashioning Clinton foreign policy, the more he is likely to face scorching questions about Chinese espionage and Beijing's campaign contributions. Being the foreign policy Vice President of this White House may end up being as much of an asset as being the Carter Administration's economic guru.