THE explanation is simple enough: Al Gore isn’t going to run for president in 2004 because he doesn’t want to lose. And defeat would be the most likely outcome of a rematch between him and President Bush. He’s wisely giving himself and the political system some time.
In doing so, he’s following the lead of an unlikely role model for a liberal Democrat: Richard M. Nixon.
Like Gore, Nixon was a vice president who became his party’s standard bearer. In 1960, Nixon lost the presidency because he came up short in a single state (Illinois) as a result of suspicious machinations. Shades of Florida in 2000.
Nixon did not run for the presidency in 1964, just as Gore has chosen not to run in 2004. The political establishment thought Nixon was washed up (in part because he lost a race for the governorship in California in 1962).
Gore is facing the same kind of quick dismissals: Yesterday, at a press conference, a reporter asked Gore how he would write his own “epitaph.” Gore laughed.
Nixon was working as a lawyer in New York when, in 1966, he made aggressive efforts on behalf of GOP congressional candidates across the country. He traveled, he spoke, he raised money. The midterms went well for the Republicans, and Nixon was given some credit for that.
His work earned him renewed loyalty in the ranks and a whole bunch of favors. He made good use of both when he decided to run for the White House in 1968.
Can Gore follow the Nixon model? Why not? Like Nixon, he’s an ideologically adaptable character. And like Nixon in 1968, Gore won’t be carrying much baggage from his prior political career by the time 2008 rolls around. He’ll still be one of the most famous Democrats in the nation, and he won’t have had to cast any votes in the House or Senate for eight years.
Gore has shown great tactical skills throughout his career, and this may have been his canniest move yet. You don’t have to look at current polls to understand just how overwhelming Bush’s advantages are in the next election cycle.
Democrats think their best opportunity will come by facing Bush down on economic issues. Gore said exactly that in a press conference yesterday afternoon.
That might be true if Bush has to face voters presiding over a weak economy. But ironically, the continued sluggishness of the recovery at present means that the economy is far more likely to be growing in 2004 – just as Bush will be facing voters again.
Why? It’s the purest logic: The smaller the national economy is now, the easier it is for the economy to show growth in the next 18 months. Those growth figures may not be impressive, but slow growth is still growth. It’s not recession, and voters know it.
In any case, Gore and other Democrats continue to assume that they can change the national subject away from the war on terror to matters they consider more congenial to their interests. Yet the sad fact is that their best (and possibly their only) opportunity for victory in 2004 will arise from a national tragedy or calamity.
Should al Qaeda reconstitute itself and inflict catastrophic damage on us in a way that might have been prevented, Bush will be (and should be) politically vulnerable. The same would be true if a war in Iraq were to go badly.
But Democrats would still have to field a candidate able to confront the president on his failures, a candidate who would seem capable of fixing what got broken. Gore would not, could not, have been that man.
His record as part of the administration that failed to go after Osama bin Laden following the embassy bombings in 1998 and USS Cole in 2000 would make him too vulnerable.
But by 2008, Gore will be beyond blame. And if he plays his semi-retirement right, he’ll be accepting his party’s nomination. Only maybe then, the banners will read Gore-Clinton.