LEGAL TENDER

• Share

(3 of 4)

That doesn't mean the process is pretty to watch, which helps account for Gore's extraordinary performance last week. His suggestion that he wasn't pressuring donors for soft money struck other fund raisers as ludicrous. Given his position, they allege, the call itself is a form of shakedown. When a Vice President phones potential donors, the White House operator comes on the line and says, "Hold for the Vice President," or a steely-toned military aide barks, "Hold for Sawhorse," using Gore's code name. It's not as if they have much choice.

And then there's the concern about what Gore might be able to do if a donor refused. "Getting a call from Al Gore and getting a call from me are two completely different things," says Wayne Berman, who last year raised more soft money than any other Republican financier. "If I ask a guy for $100,000, the donor can tell me to go jump in the lake. When Al Gore does it, the donor can't say that, and he has to wonder, Does he have my privates in his hand? Now most people in Washington know that a Vice President can't do very much in the way of revenge. But the guy on the other end of the line doesn't know that."

Not until Monday, after reports of Gore's calls made headlines, did his counsel, Charles Burson, provide the triple-layered legal defense Gore recited so faithfully in his press conference: It wasn't wrong; it has been done before; I'll never do it again. When that wasn't enough, Gore made his stand on higher ground: he needed to be re-elected for the good of the country: "Our economy is roaring. Inflation is low. Crime is down." But the bulk of the press conference was a painful litany of legalisms and evasions and long pauses while his moral hard drive rebooted. "Everything that I did I understood to be lawful," the Vice President whirred. "I think the entire episode constitutes further reasons why there should be campaign-finance reform."

Just not in his lifetime. Ever since the revelations of Indonesian influence peddling and itinerant Chinese businessmen began dominating headlines last fall, Clinton and Gore have made a great show of support for the McCain-Feingold reform bill, which would ban soft money altogether. This is one time they can hide behind the bully pulpit, since the decision now rests with Congress.

With the exception of a few brave souls, the law- makers who would need to rewrite the laws have the greatest interest in preserving them. So whatever pleasure the Republicans felt in watching the White House thrashing was offset by fear that Senator Fred Thompson's investigation of campaign finance would wind up biting them too. After all, the Republicans raised $200 million more than the Democrats last year without Air Force One or any presidential bedrooms to proffer. And while Bill Clinton may have sold tickets to his radio address, a minority whip called Newt Gingrich in 1990 offered Republican donors special briefings at the Bush White House and a chance to consult on policy.

After much debate, the Senators last week struck a deal to make sure that Thompson never gets close enough to do them any harm. Only "illegal activities" during the 1996 race would come under scrutiny, which, we now know, takes the most unseemly hustling--all the soft money and all the independent expenditures--off the table and leaves only questions like whether Beijing secretly funded anyone's campaign.