Going For Broke

The New Hampshire weather was conspiring to freeze Campaign 2000 in its tracks--stranding Alan Keyes in Detroit so he couldn't celebrate his Iowa surprise, waylaying John McCain's bus as it plowed through the snow--but Al Gore at least was on fire. He stayed in Iowa barely long enough to thank voters there before Air Force Two was in the air, heading to Manchester for a predawn arrival, just ahead of the storm. By 7 he was ensconced at a local diner, giving nine television interviews in an hour and a half, before the campaign entourage dragged itself back to the hotel for what everyone hoped would be an hour of rest. But not for the Veep. Gore was padding up and down the hallway of the Sheraton Nashua in his white bathrobe, pounding on the door of spokesman Chris Lehane and senior adviser Mike Feldman, barging into their room, rousing them from sleep in his desire to keep the fun going.

They made their way to a rally in a high school gym; but when aides pointed out that it was hard to schedule more events in a state gripped by a blizzard, Gore said, "No way! What else can we do? Who else can we see?" So off they went to a Dunkin' Donuts, ice-flecked cameras in tow, to buy up some doughnuts to deliver to the snowplow guys at a city garage.

As the polls floated upward in the gust from his Iowa blowout, Gore was just being himself, only more so: more manic, more combative, more determined to take every position Bill Bradley has ever held and try to strangle him with it on national television. It was Bradley last week, under rising pressure, who looked into the abyss and concluded it was time for a change in tactics. And in the end, that could turn out to be Gore's sweetest victory of all.

When the whole rationale for your campaign against a sitting Vice President who has vice-presided over historic national contentment is that you will offer a new, ennobling kind of politics, a cleaner breed of campaign, you shed that skin at your peril. Bradley advisers had been pushing him for weeks to hit back at Gore's relentless attacks, even at the risk of compromising the whole reason for his race. But last Wednesday, when he arrived at the last debate before the Feb. 1 primary with his fists clenched, it became clear why, apart from high principle, Bradley doesn't like to go negative: it's just not his game--he's not a natural spitballer--and so he managed to look both negative and uncomfortable at the same time.

Gone were the nutritious, high-policy debate-club encounters of recent weeks: Wednesday night's match was petty and bitter, as Bradley all but called Gore a liar and Gore all but called Bradley a whiner and a fraud, while both insisted none of this constituted a "negative attack." Of the two, Bradley was playing for higher stakes: he was the one with the most ground to make up after Iowa, and he was the one who risked looking just like any other desperate politician. Except that he doesn't have the halo of the greatest economy ever shimmering above his head.

As if that point weren't clear enough, Gore brought former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin to his side in New Hampshire on Friday and let campaign aides suggest that Rubin might make a perfect running mate. But the point was also clear the night before, when Gore got 89 minutes of prime time to spend gazing over the shoulder of the triumphal President, as Bill Clinton declared that "the State of the Union is the strongest it has ever been." Having forced Bradley to play by his rules in the campaign, Gore now got to watch his partner make the rules for the whole political battle for the rest of the year, with countless proposals so poll-tested and bulletproof that Republicans were clapping him on the back when it was all over. Clinton promised tax cuts and health-care reform, debt reduction and gun control, reaping credit for everything but sunshine and inviting voters to ask themselves, Do you really want to change drivers now, just as we're heading for the promised land?

To the extent that Gore has changed tactics as well in the past few weeks, it shows in his relationship with Clinton and in his willingness to position himself as ally and heir. "You remember what it was like in New Hampshire during the Reagan-Bush years?" Gore asked a gymful of high school kids, who probably didn't. On the day Clinton proposed the largest expansion of health-care programs since the creation of Medicare, Gore was neatly staging his own health-care event based on the same proposals.

Although Clinton and Gore no longer have their weekly private luncheons, the two talk regularly, sometimes twice a day. Besides Hillary, the only phone caller for whom Clinton regularly clears the room of his close aides is Gore. Top Gore lieutenants had a seat at the table for many of the key budget meetings in December and early January, and sources tell TIME that just last week some in the Administration were promoting steps that would probably benefit Gore politically by taking the edge off fuel prices and helping keep inflation at bay. The plan would inject millions of barrels of oil from America's Strategic Petroleum Reserve into the market, a move that could begin to deflate high heating-oil prices in places like New Hampshire (see story on page 64).