CURRENT EVENTS UPDATE

By NANCY GIBBS

Think of all they would have to talk about, if Al Gore and George W. Bush could go out for a burger to savor their victories in the primaries and resist the temptation to rip each other’s throat out. Who would have thought last summer that Bush would have the near-death experience, or that Gore, in the course of flattening Bill Bradley, would manage to climb to a dead heat with Bush after lagging 17 points behind in January—and have even more money left over? After their long distraction, the two presumptive nominees finally get to concentrate on one another, and they are losing no time trying to define each other. But in the course of doing so, they will be defining themselves as well.

Bush, says an aide, thinks Gore is “a phony and a cutthroat” and cannot wait to take him on. While he doesn’t quite know what to make of the Vice President, people close to him say, he has a gut dislike for him. Already you can hear it when he talks about Gore’s “slash-and-burn politics”: “Mr. Gore, I’m not going to let you get away with it,” he said last week. “We’re not going to be fooled by somebody who says one thing and absolutely does something else.” It is as though Gore has become a stalking-horse for all those elitist liberals, the special pleaders who whine about rights and fairness from the comfort of their ivory towers and whom Bush has reviled since his days at Yale. And Bush doesn’t believe he should feel guilty at all for the advantages life has bestowed on him; when he says he inherited “half my father’s friends and all his enemies,” he signals that he views his extraordinary privilege as more burden than benefit.

You would think that within Camp Gore there would be an equally fired-up contingent appalled that the Vice President, so experienced and knowledgeable on the most obscure policy scraps, should be challenged by some pampered lightweight who thinks five years as Governor of a state with weak executive power qualifies him to be President. But you would be wrong. This is not the way Gore thinks, which tells you as much about how he approaches problems as Bush’s instinctive antipathy for Gore does about him.

Gore views Bush, like Bill Bradley before him, as simply another “obstacle to be overcome,” as an adviser put it, on Gore’s way to his appointment with destiny. This view is shared by the people around him. It is not an epic ideological battle; even the true lefties talk about Bush’s “extremism” not as a threat to the social fabric but as a liability they intend to exploit. They probe him clinically, looking for weaknesses, soft spots. This isn’t personal; it’s just the way politics works.

Gore is well known for his appetite for cold-blooded analysis, whether of an opponent or a proposal. “He has a penchant for issues that are complex and intellectual, as opposed to emotional and ideological,” explains a former aide. “With Gore, the question isn’t, What do I believe? It’s, What do I know?” Although much has been made of Bush’s crash course in policy early last year, when the best minds in the party came down to Austin, Texas, to help school him on everything from China policy to the complexities of the earned-income tax credit, Gore too has a history of arranging tutorials to help him hone his views: with Leon Fuerth on arms control, Reed Hundt on the new economy, Roger Revelle on climate change.

This process applies even to what many would consider purely moral issues. When Bush needed to ground his soul, he walked on the beach with Billy Graham; when Gore felt he had lost his way after Vietnam, he enrolled in divinity school, looking for “a systematic exploration of structures of right and wrong.” He never finished, and when he left, his father asked him, “Did you find the answers you were looking for?” Gore Jr. answered, “I’ve learned to ask more intelligent questions.”

Most politicians, including Bush, use the words right and wrong to talk about gut convictions, the values they live by. When Gore seizes upon an answer, it is because he is convinced that he has got hold of the truth. Instinct and, even worse, impulse have almost no room in his world. That doesn’t mean Gore has no principles, only that he won’t get into a fight until he thinks he can support those principles with every conceivable footnote. Some of his most conspicuous positions—pushing the Kyoto treaty on global warming, despite near unanimous Senate opposition, or calling for intervention in Bosnia long before it was popular, or expressing the conviction that gays should be allowed to serve openly in the military—can be perceived as reflections of his value system, but in each case he also has the filing cabinet to prove it.

If Gore’s confidence is born of his hard work, Bush’s is born of his instinctual style. He is proudly allergic to endless briefing books and the big fat texts Gore eats for lunch. What is often viewed as a Bush weakness—his heavy reliance on staff—he considers a strength. Bush prides himself on being comfortable around smart people who will tell him the unvarnished truth, on seeing through spin and personal agendas, on spotting the weakness in an argument. He prefers talking to reading. “I like discussions as an integral part of the decision-making process, because I believe I’m adept at reading people,” he told TIME. “I get a feel for ’em.”

If Bill Clinton wants everyone in the room to like him, and Al Gore wants everyone to think he’s right, George Bush wants everyone to know who’s boss. He mocks advisers who try to impress him with obscure information, insisting that they “speak English,” and he frequently cuts people off in midsentence, keeping control of the conversation. He earns the loyalty of his staff by giving them broad authority, but he doesn’t hesitate to remind even his closest advisers that he’s the big dog, something he usually does with a sarcastic remark. While Gore may view few of the people close to him as his true equals, he assumes everyone understands this; Bush rarely misses the chance to bring it up.

Questions
1. How do Gore and Bush view one another?
2. What are the principal differences in style and temperament between the two candidates?