How Gore's Campaign Went Off the Rails

How's Al Gore feeling these days? Never better, if you ask anyone inside his campaign--pumped, working without notes, even taking his jacket off. And those polls, the ones showing the Vice President suddenly running slightly behind Bill Bradley in New Hampshire and in a dead heat with him in New York, or suggesting Bradley is the better at beating George W. Bush? Not to worry. As the glum figures rolled in earlier this month, Gore told a top adviser, "I'm connecting. I feel it. We just gotta keep doing what we're doing."

To many anxious Democrats, it seems the only people...