Campaign 2000: The Trouble with Tony

It sounded almost like the good old days on Al Gore's presidential campaign, with lots of dire talk about his opponent's risky schemes and secret plans, arrogant approaches and smug assumptions. Last week Gore managed to parlay what was to have been a simple health-care speech to medical reporters in Chicago into a dissertation on George W. Bush's coziness with the National Rifle Association. (A top N.R.A. official had been videotaped saying of Bush, "We'll have a President...where we work out of their office.") Gore also savaged the Texas Governor's Social Security plan with predictions that it could force waitresses to shoulder heavy trays until they are 70 years old, just "to finance some risky tax scheme."

Democrats should have been heartened to see their candidate in fighting trim. But with a new round of polls suggesting that Bush's return to sunny centrism is getting a surprisingly warm reception in at least half a dozen states that Democrats generally take for granted--such as Iowa, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin and even West Virginia--many in the party are worried about whether Gore's campaign team is ready for the general-election brawl. Renewed infighting and finger pointing have brought fresh doubts about the cadre that is taking over the national campaign machinery--doubts largely centered on Gore campaign chairman Tony Coelho, a former California Congressman with a 20-year history of generating both intense loyalties and animosities. "It's not something you worry about," Coelho declared in an interview last week. "You've got decisions to make, and you make them. The campaign can't be run by 100 outsiders."

This is not the first time Coelho's management has been questioned. He transformed the Gore campaign several times last year, banishing longtime advisers, firing many members of the campaign high command. His brash style proved to have been right for the moment: Coelho helped hone a sloppy, unfocused operation into one that dispatched Bill Bradley with relative ease and brought the Vice President within striking distance of Bush in the national polls.

These days, though, Coelho's ratio of mishaps to successes seems to be on the rise. Consider the Elian Gonzalez matter. Although Gore had distanced himself from the Clinton Administration from the outset of the controversy by saying it should be handled in family court, sources say his top advisers--primarily Coelho, but with backing from message gurus Carter Eskew and Bob Shrum--urged him to take a higher profile by calling for permanent residency for the Cuban boy. Coelho was out front in arguing that the move would bolster Gore's chances of carrying Florida--the nation's fourth most populous state--and proving he was no retroliberal on foreign policy. Instead, the Coelho-led gambit was almost universally dismissed as pandering gone terribly wrong. Behind the scenes in Goreland, it was derided as more evidence of how campaign decision making under Coelho has become insular and, more important, often wrongheaded.