AL GORE: HIS STRUGGLE TO GET REAL

Among Washington journalists who have covered him--and especially among those who covered him as a Congressman and Senator, before he slipped into the cocoon of the vice presidency--the line on Al Gore is nearly unanimous. In private the Vice President can be an inordinately charming fellow: informal, enthusiastic, self-deprecating, with the kind of knowing wit that many baby boomers admire. But switch on a TV camera or get him in front of a crowd, and a mysterious alchemy transforms him into solid oak. This is the Al Gore the public has come to know--something akin to the robotic Abe Lincoln at Disneyland, only less lifelike.

The strange disjunction between the private and public Gores stymies his friends, frustrates his advisers and puzzles the press. To one degree or another, all politicians suffer from it, of course. For most of their waking hours they have learned to smother their natural impulses, lest the videotape capture some untoward wisecrack or a flirtatious glance. They know the landscape of American politics is littered with the carcasses of colleagues who tried, with disastrous results, to be a normal human being.

The most appealing politicians are the ones for whom the disjunction is not so severe--who let a bit of their natural appeal shine through. This can come in handy in tight spots. Ronald Reagan's undoubted insouciance helped him escape blame for the unconventional accounting practices of Oliver North. John F. Kennedy's sense of ironic detachment--common to rich kids since the time of Prince Hal--allowed him to slip out from under the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs. And Franklin Roosevelt's inborn aristocratic bearing led his public to assume during the Depression that he knew what he was doing, even when he didn't, which was often.

Gore surely knows this. He went to Harvard, after all. From childhood, his life has been consumed by politics. The son of a Senator, he was born and raised in D.C. and grew up appearing in his father's campaign commercials. ("Son," Dad said in one, "always love your country.") He learned early the benefits of pretense. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, Gore's response to any problems of personal image making has been to pile further layers of artifice atop his already artificial public persona. At every appearance nowadays he uncorks a couple of self-deprecating gags about his wooden demeanor; he delivers them--surprise--woodenly. He has made gimmicky, scripted appearances on late-night TV. Far worse, however, he has taken a cue from his boss and dived headlong into the politics of moral exhibitionism--trying to convince the public that he feels its pain by exposing his own. When asked recently what he had learned from the President, Gore replied, "I've learned a great deal about empathy... I've learned to recognize the feelings in myself."