How Would Al Gore Govern?
Transition to Governing Project

January 11, 2000

Transcript prepared from a tape recording

Panelists:	James "Woody" Brosnan, regional reporter, Scripps Howard News Service, Memphis Commercial Appeal
	John Harris, White House correspondent, Washington Post
	Elaine Kamarck, John F. Kennedy School of Government and policy adviser to Gore
	Ron Klain, former chief of staff to Vice President Gore
	Hon. Larry Pressler, former U.S. Senator (R-SD)
	Hon. Jim Slattery, former U.S. Representative (D-KS)
Moderators:	David Brooks, senior editor, Weekly Standard
	E. J. Dionne, Jr., columnist, Washington Post
Project Directors:	Norman Ornstein, resident scholar, American Enterprise Institute
	Thomas Mann, senior fellow, Brookings Institution

Proceedings:

MR. ORNSTEIN: Ladies and gentlemen, I want to welcome you all here to the third in a series of four sessions called, "How Would They Govern?" I'm Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute. This is a series of programs sponsored by the Transition to Governing Project, a larger project under the auspices of the American Enterprise Institute, along with the Brookings Institution and the Hoover Institution. I will, in a moment, introduce my co-director in this endeavor, Tom Mann.

The aim of the Transition To Governing Project is, first and foremost, to get issues of governing raised and considered in the public discourse and by the candidates during the campaign in an era of the permanent campaign when issues and techniques of campaigning have tended to dominate over the ultimate objective, presumably of elections, which is to lead to a process of governing.

To that end, the Transition To Governing Project, which is also going to focus on trying to create a better transition with the focus, we hope, during the campaign a little bit on the transition, itself, and then the transition that begins after the election, continuing until the inauguration and the new Congress.

We are doing a series of seminars in other areas, of books, and we will continue to pursue this. Last week we had sessions on Bill Bradley and on John McCain and this Thursday we will have the fourth session in this series on George W. Bush and how he would govern.

I would note that looking ahead in some of the things that we're doing. We will be publishing a book of essays on the permanent campaign and its origins; a book focusing on the transition memos written by the dean of presidential scholars, Richard Neustadt, which is being pulled together and edited by Charles O. Jones of the University of Wisconsin who is here with us today. We are also going to have a seminar on April 19th, surrounding a book called, "The Presidential Difference", written by Professor Fred Greenstein, another excellent presidential scholar at Princeton University.

This session, let me note, and the others has been pulled together very ably by the indefatigable John Fortier along with a number of others here at AEI, whom I will acknowledge later. I will introduce the panelists, including our two moderators, in a moment. But first, let me turn to Tom Mann of the Brookings Institution.

MR. MANN: Thank you very much, Norm.

For those of you here at AEI and at home, who have watched the first two of these sessions, you might have a feeling of Groundhog Day as we have the third of our set of introductions. But I must tell you seldom have I had an opportunity to participate in planning an event that is so unusual for a presidential campaign and so constructive I think.

To put on the table this early in the campaign questions about governance seems to me and, indeed, to many of you, to increase, however slightly, the probability that the campaign might actually facilitate governing after the election rather than complicate it intensely.

I have been delighted to work with Norm, with generous support of The Pew Charitable Trusts in the broader project of the Permanent Campaign and the Transition to Governing. I would simply mention two things. One, E.J. Dionne and David Brooks are the best, most dynamic duo to hit Washington since the Ev and Charlie Show of many decades ago, in Congress.

Secondly, I would mention--and there are copies outside--the current issue of the "Brookings Review" is dedicated to the State of Governance in America, 2000. The last chapter, written by Norm and myself, on Governance Questions for the 2000 Election, raises some of the subjects that we are seeing addressed here; questions about the transition, about structuring and agenda, about recruiting a staff, about dealing with Congress, coping with the permanent campaign and the like.

I am confident, thanks to our stellar cast here today that we will continue on with the tradition we set last week of exploring some typically unexplored questions of governance.

Thank you very much.

Norm.

MR. ORNSTEIN: Thanks, Tom.

The format that we're pursuing here is the same for each of these sessions. We have six panelists including two who have represented the candidate in the campaign; two practitioners who worked with and around the candidate in the process of governing; and two journalists, including one from the home state who covered the candidate in different venues in the past.

Let me introduce our panelists. First going from over on my far left, John Harris is White House reporter for the Washington Post. He's been with the Post since 1985; has covered the White House since 1995. Before that, covered Virginia politics, including the administration of Governor Doug Wilder, and has also covered the military. Has a very interesting piece on Al Gore in this morning's Washington Post.

Elaine Kamarck has served as Senior Policy Advisor to Vice President Al Gore, through the first term of the Clinton/Gore Administration and a little bit beyond. In that time she created and managed the National Performance Review, looking at the structure and performance of the Executive Branch; also managed the Vice President's Commission on Airline Safety and Security, established after the TWA-800 disaster; served on the Welfare Reform Task Force in the Administration. Elaine is a political scientist who, before joining the Administration, served just before as a Senior Fellow with the Progressive Policy Institute; has written columns for Newsday and the Los Angeles Times; has been a regular commentator and is currently at the Kennedy School of Government.

Jim Slattery represented the Second District of Kansas in the House of Representatives from his election in 1982 through 1994, serving for 12 years on the Energy and Commerce Committee on which then-Representative Gore also served. He also served on the Budget and Banking and Veterans Affairs Committees; had served in the Kansas State House for a period before that and is currently a partner with one of the most prominent Washington law firms, Wiley, Rein and Fielding.

Larry Pressler served South Dakota in the United States Senate from his election in 1986 through 1996, serving as Chairman for the last few of those years as Chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, and was a prominent leader and author of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. He served, of course, with Senator Gore on the Commerce Committee, also serving on the Small Business, Foreign Relations and Banking Committees; was in the House of Representatives for South Dakota for 8 years before that; was a Rhodes Scholar, a Vietnam Veteran and a graduate of Harvard Law School and currently is a senior partner in the Washington law firm of O'Connor and Hannon.

Ron Klain served as chief of staff and counselor to Vice President Gore from 1995 until 1999, directing Gore's staff, overseeing policy development, political management, communications, strategy and other matters. He had served as Assistant to President Clinton and chief of staff and counselor to Attorney General Reno before that. He had been staff director of the Senate Democratic Leadership Committee and also of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. And before that clerked for Supreme Court Justice Byron White.

Woody Brosnan has been a Scripps Howard regional reporter since 1993, with particular responsibility to the Memphis Commercial Appeal. Has been an editor in Memphis, the newspaper's Nashville bureau chief before moving to Washington, covered Senator Gore for his entire tenure in the Senate, and has covered Gore's national campaigns in 1988, 1992, and 1996 and writes a weekly column for the Commercial Appeal.

As with our other sessions, we are joined by the two moderators. I'm not sure which is Ev and which is Charlie, but I will let them sort that out as they have sorted out their support for different eras of President Teddy Roosevelt.

Over on my left, E.J. Dionne is a columnist for the Washington Post and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, has served as a reporter and editorial writer for the Post and also as a correspondent in many places around the globe for the New York Times and is the author of one of the most widely read books on contemporary American politics, "Why Americans Hate Politics."

David Brooks, behind me, has made one change in honor of Vice President Gore, he brought his palm pilot for this session. He's a senior--but he doesn't have it strapped to his belt--a senior editor of the Weekly Standard, a contributing editor at Newsweek and a commentator on National Public Radio. He's been with the Standard since it began in 1995, before that working at the Wall Street Journal in a number of posts including European correspondent and Op Ed Page Editor. And he is currently writing a book for Simon and Schuster on the "Manners and Morals of Upscale America", and as I said the last time, something about which we know very little around here. So, I turn it to our moderators.

MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Norm.

We are grateful to all of you who are here with us and to all who are joining us on CSPAN. I appreciated Tom's reference to the Ev and Charlie Show. It's worth noting that Everett Dirksen and Charlie Halleck never did lead the Republican Party to a majority in the '60s. So, I think that means David and I are doomed to be in the minority forever for which the Republic is probably grateful.

[Laughter.]

MODERATOR: If I may paraphrase a distinguished Presidential candidate, this is the greatest panel ever assembled in American history or at least the best since David and I invented the American Presidency over 200 years ago.

[Laughter.]

MODERATOR: I'm sorry. It's hard to be in public life and our spirit here is not to put down those who seek the Presidency. It's hard to be in the arena and ambition can have a high cost. Ambrose Bierce, the great humorist, once said that the definition of ambition is an over-mastering desire to be vilified by enemies when living and made ridiculous by friends when dead. So, we have to honor the people willing to go through that.

Our purpose here is more humble than vilification; it's to see what we can learn from the people who know them, how candidates for the presidency might govern if they were elected. I've quoted him at two other sessions, so, I will stay with this recently established tradition. Thomas Reed said that a statesman is a successful politician who is dead. Now, we seek not an artificially created standard of citizenship but simply a bit of information on how these candidates will govern while still alive.

Now, our audience has been extremely perceptive and helpful at these two sessions and we're counting on you again. If you're seated around that corner, David will try to find you. If you have an urgent question I will try to make sure anyone seated on this side gets their chance to get in.

Again, I would like to remind everyone here that our purpose is not to have a debate about health care or reinventing government, even though Elaine would be happy to argue with you about that.

[Tape change.]

But to shed light on how Vice-President Gore might act if he governed the country, so please try to focus your questions on that issue.

And I turn now to my friend, David, who knows no controlling legal authority to ask the first question. David.

MR. BROOKS: Thank you, E.J. We had a tough time deciding who would ask the first question for the Gore panel, so we called Naomi Wolf, and she said the alpha male should ask the first question.

[Laughter.]

MR. DIONNE: But I gave it to David anyway.

MR. BROOKS: Lacking one of those, I'm going to go first.

This is a question for Elaine Kamarck, and it has to do with staffing and organization of the new administration. Most candidates come to the White House with a core cadre of intimates who they've been with for years and years. And one of the paradoxes of this campaign so far is that Al Gore--many of his closest advisers on this campaign at least are people he doesn't know all that well, haven't worked with him for decades and decades, and who, ironically, in times like 1992 were not his supporters, supported other candidates, were not Clinton supporters. There's Donna Brazille, who I believe worked for Dick Gephart back then; Tony Coelho, Bob Shrum, Harrison Hickman, Carter Eskew. None of these would qualify as Gore long-time loyalists. So my question is: why has he made these moves to get these people so intimate with him, and what would it mean for the way he would staff and organize an administration?

MS. KAMARCK: First of all, thank you very much for inviting me here today. I knew I would be faced with a lot of questions that I really don't have answers to, and this is a good start.

Carter Eskew has known the Vice-President for 25 years, worked with him in Tennessee, worked with him in his senate campaigns. They are old friends. He knows him well. Donna has known the Vice-President through Democratic politics for over 15 years. These are not strangers to him. These are not people that were part of the Clinton Administration, and I think that that surprised some people. They were kind of distant from the Clinton Administration, but they're certainly people that the Vice-President knows and feels comfortable with.

And I think he's put together a team of political consultants that he feels meets his needs, and part of his needs were to differentiate himself from the Administration, because he wanted to win the presidency--he wants to win the presidency on his own terms. It doesn't mean that he wants to say that anything the Administration did was wrong, because in fact, it's been quite a good record and a record he's proud of, but it's a feeling that he has to win the presidency on his own terms, and he has to put together a different team for winning the presidency.

I think that the relationship between a group of political consultants who make television ads and are expert in running campaigns, and who would be in a government, isn't very close in this day and age. I mean, I think that Al Gore has a wide circle of very serious acquaintances, many of whom are in the government today, many of whom he would keep in the government, bring back to government, et cetera. I don't know where you get this idea that a campaign predicts a government, because in fact, recently, it doesn't. Many of the most important positions--how many secretaries of state, have spent time organizing counties in Ohio? It just doesn't work that way any more. So, I believe that he has a good campaign organization and that he would have a very sound government, but the one going exactly into the other is a kind of false premise.

MR. DIONNE: Before--I had a question for Ron, but I wanted to follow up on that with you and Ron. It does seem to be the case that the Vice-President needed to do a kind of radical reorganization of the campaign last fall, and that does have some bearing on his style of governing, which is to say--I think one of the mysteries was why didn't Gore--didn't the Vice-President have in place a kind of campaign that would work? Why did he have to go through all of that trauma? Why did so many people who work for him have to go through all that trauma and move to Nashville? Why was that necessary? Why wasn't he prepared earlier?

MS. KAMARCK: I don't know. I mean, it's a good question. I think part of the answer is probably that he had to get into this campaign, feel the rhythm and the dynamics of this campaign to decide exactly how he wanted to run it, that when you're an incumbent vice-president for 7 years, you are overwhelmed by the culture, the day-to-day business of the White House, what goes on in the White House. And I think it was only once he began to campaign that he realized that he wanted to have a different kind of campaign, that part of doing that was moving it back to Nashville, bringing into the--in the Nashville headquarters, there's a lot of people who's he known for years and years, who he feels comfortable with, who have sort of come back, and I think it's been an experience of creating his own campaign, his own identity as a leader, which every vice-president has to go through. And I think it's not an easy thing to do.

MR. DIONNE: Ron, you had to live through that trauma. Could you talk about that, respond to what Elaine said?

MR. KLAIN: I can. And first of all, I didn't find it very traumatic. I found it very exciting and a very positive experience for I think everyone involved. Look, the bottom line here is I think the Vice-President has done, over the course of this campaign, what all great candidates and what all great presidents do, which is adjust to circumstances, make changes in his organization, recover from setbacks and move on and learn from it.

Ronald Reagan went through the same thing in the 1980 primaries, made some changes in his campaign after the New Hampshire primary, went on to win the presidency and serve for 8 years.

So I think that the Vice-President, shuffling things around, bringing in different advisers, getting the campaign on solid footing, is a very impressive thing, and I think above all, I think what it shows about him, E.J., is that this is the kind of leader and executive who can recognize when there are problems in the organization, do something decisive about it, impose his wishes and his will and his direction on it, and make the changes that need to be made to make it effective, and that's what he done. I think it's why the campaign is working better now and doing better now, and why he is doing better as a candidate. And I think it speaks very well of him.

MR. DIONNE: Could I ask you, Ron, many politicians hide a deeply political and ambitious interior behind a veneer of substance. Gore may be one of the few politicians we've ever seen who hides a core of substance behind a political and ambitious veneer. I'm wondering what you make of that observation?

I also want to quote a distinguished historian--actually, it's John Harris from today's Washington Post. "Simply put, according to people who have advised his campaign, or analyzed it, candidate Gore seems to have little intuitive sense of when enough is enough, and so he keeps talking even when it might be wiser to stop."

Could you respond to both of those ideas, which I think are interrelated?

MR. KLAIN: Well, I disagree with John's observation. I rarely disagree with John's writing in the Post, as outstanding as it is. But I found myself disagreeing with--

MR. DIONNE: --just got 10 degrees tougher for the rest of the campaign.

MR. KLAIN: I found myself disagreeing with a little bit of John's writing this morning in this regard.

I think that what candidate Gore is doing is going out there every day and taking, literally, dozens and dozens of questions from all comers in open meetings, and answering those questions, and doing so without rehearsal or preparation, and I think voters are getting to see the real Al Gore more and more and better and better. I think that's one reason why he's doing better and better as this campaign goes on. I think it's an admirable way to run the campaign. Sometimes it has a lot of political risk associated with it. It's unscripted. It's politically dangerous, if you will, but I think it's the way campaigns should be run. I hope it sets a model for how campaigns are going to be run in the future.

In terms of what's on the inside or the outside of Al Gore and these sorts of analysis, E.J., you know, I'm trained as a lawyer, not a psychiatrist or psychologist, and I'm not big on the whole pop psychology thing. But I will say is this: the Vice-President has very strong principled beliefs about what he thinks about policy and ideas in politics, and he has fought for those ideas for his entire career through thick and thin, sometimes when they've been popular, sometimes when they've been very unpopular, sometimes when they've been seen as somewhat cutting edge or beyond the cutting edge. And I think it's that quality, that absolute soundness and certainty about what he believes in, and his willingness to fight for that, that is coming through as this campaign wages on, and is his greatest asset in this race, absolutely.

MR. DIONNE: David, I think, has a question for you, Senator, and you can jump in.

SENATOR PRESSLER: Okay.

MR. BROOKS: This is for Senator Pressler. We've done three panels so far, Bradley, McCain and Gore, and none of these senators in the Senate would win the popularity contest for the senator with the most friends in the Senate. And it's kind of interesting that maybe having somewhat of a loner status qualifies you to be President.

I was wondering if you could describe sort of the personal relationships between Al Gore and his fellow senators, and in particular, how did Republicans see him? He's sometimes viewed as some Republicans as far more partisan than many other Democrats, including Bill Clinton and Bill Bradley.

SENATOR PRESSLER: Well, it was my pleasure to serve both in the House and the Senate with Al Gore. And I think one thing our panel is aimed at how would he govern? And I think he would govern as a traditional liberal Democrat, more so than perhaps any other candidate, and I say that being on the opposite side of the aisle.

Now, I got along well with Al Gore. Serving on the Commerce Committee we traveled together to the 1992 summit on environment and so forth. We were usually on the opposite sides of the issues, but he would engage in issues maybe more so than almost anybody else on the Commerce Committee.

But the reason that I say that he would govern as a traditional liberal Democrat more so than anyone else, for example, on the telecommunications bill, he was very engaged. At that time he was Vice-President. That bill was around for 11 years. But in any event, he was always for universal service provisions. He was suspicious of total deregulation, but in the end he supported the bill, and it happened in part because he and Greg Simon and others were willing to engage, and I would say that Al Gore knows that bill as well as anybody.

On all the transportation deregulation bills that passed, rail and air and so forth, he was always very cautious about it. He struggled very hard with those because he really is a traditional, liberal Democrat. And on the environment issues, in the '92 summit in Brazil at the Earth Conference, he was just very critical of the Bush Administration. But he's been almost muted during his vice-presidency. I think he would govern--he would return to those international environment issues.

And he and I exchanged the chairmanship of the Science Committee many times, but he perhaps exemplifies a product that's come through the congressional system, House and Senate, and has worked on issues--I'll certainly give him credit for that--he engages on issues.

Now, the Clinton Administration frequently doesn't even take a position before a lot of congressional committees. But back in the old age you could always say, "What's the Administration's position on this?" The Clinton Administration just doesn't engage until the very end. But Al Gore, I think we'd be back--he would have a staff up there that would engage on amendments and so forth. So I think he would govern on tax matters and on government regulation matters and on environment matters pretty much as a traditional liberal Democrat. However, except one area, I think in the area of defense, we would find that he is more in the Scoop Jackson tradition when it comes down to it. For example, he was on the Arms Control Observer Group, which I served with him. He worked through that treaty. I think the reason that the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty didn't pass in the Senate this past spring was because the Administration didn't work it through. They didn't work with senators. They didn't take a group of senators to Geneva. They didn't include a group, and it was just speeches. So he would, I think on defense issues, he would be more of a Scoop Jackson type of person. So those are some of my observations.

Now, in terms of how well he's liked, I always liked him as a person. He would always--he loves to talk issues. He'll talk issues forever on an airplane, and I guess I love to talk them too, so maybe we're two of a kind in that sense, but he would always engage in a sensible debate. We were frequently on the opposite sides of things, but he would always engage in a discussion.

MR. DIONNE: Thank you, Senator. Elaine Kamarck will have a chance to rebut the liberal argument, although she may wait till after the Democratic primaries to do that.

[Laughter.]

MR. DIONNE: I want to ask John Harris. The standard line is that Vice-President Gore is the most active vice-president in history. We won't go into what exactly that phrase means, but is that true? Can you give some examples from your coverage of the White House of where Gore was involved in foreign policy issues and welfare, in particular I think are interesting areas, though you may have better areas to mention. Could you talk about your sense of his activism and his role in the White House?

MR. HARRIS: Sure, I will, and I have to say that it's chastening to answer a question like that, because as a White House reporter we're always viewing these events as somewhat opaquely trying to glean as best what we can what's really going on in the room, and when you're on a panel with somebody--with two people who really were in the room, you risk the faux pas.

MR. KLAIN : But go ahead and guess, John. That's the way you guys always do it anyway.

[Laughter.]

MR. DIONNE: Just tell the truth, as you always do, John.

MR. HARRIS: In the spirit of the morning, as Ron suggested, I'm going to wing it. But I don't think that's a cliche. I really--I do think that Gore has been the most active vice-president, and I think it has been based on the relationship that he's had with President Clinton, even though the theme of this year has been the sort of incipient tension between the two of them and some of the resentments as the Vice-President has tried to move away. I mean, I think at the core of it is almost a psychological need of President Clinton to have Vice-President Gore around, that he trusts his judgment, that he's somebody who he can regard as a peer in a way that he can't with most of his other advisers.

I think that it really is based on that relationship, because if it had to do with the staff, I think, as near as I can tell, most of the West Wing staff isn't particularly fond of Vice-President Gore, and they weren't necessarily in the first term. There were recurrent resentments or tensions.

I think welfare reform, as you suggested, is a good example, because it does to some degree rebut Senator Pressler's point. As near as I can tell, the Vice-President agreed with the political consultants in the 1996 campaign who were saying that it was essential that President Clinton sign that Republican drafted welfare reform bill, and I don't think that he advocated that position strictly for reasons of political expediency. I think he believed it, and it reflected the school of thought of the so-called new Democrat, or the people who emerged out of the Democratic Leadership Council, that this one area in which successful Democrats needed to depart from traditional liberal orthodoxy.

And use of force issues, when in the recurrent conflicts that the United States has had with Iraq, where President Clinton has faced decisions about whether to use force, as near as we can tell, it's always been Vice-President Gore who's been willing to steel the President, say, "Look, we do need to use force", also along with Madeline Albright.

More than that on foreign affairs, I've picked up a sense, and maybe Ron can comment on that, that where the Vice-President is always agitating for is a position of clarity, that he often gets very frustrated with the improvisational character of decision making in the Clinton Administration, where they're sort of muddling through this problem or that, either domestically or in foreign affairs. If you think back to the first term and the sort agonizing process by which Clinton ultimately decided what to do in Haiti or in Bosnia, I think that just chafes at the Vice-President, that he is one--if Clinton is a master improviser, Gore prefers ideological cleanness, and a greater sort of crispness and alacrity in decision-making. And so I think that in a Gore Administration you wouldn't see the muddle-along approach, which, you know, has its ups and downs. At the end of the day, the Clinton Administration usually manages to muddle along to a successful result, and so it has its advantages as a leadership style; I just don't think that it would be a President Gore leadership style.

MR BROOKS: I'd like to ask Woody Brosnan, who's followed Vice-President Gore for as long as many reporters or longer than most, about this question. Really, it's re-asking E.J.'s veneer question and about Vice-President Gore's executive temperament.

Many people have been surprised by the really aggressive and tough way he's been conducting this campaign. Some Republicans may be less so. Have you seen a more hard-edged political style emerge from him recently, or is this something that was visible right from the beginning, and how do you think he would operate his administration in what was likely to be a tightly balanced Congress? Would it be a partisan style, a coalition building style? How do you see sort of the executive mood of his administration?

MR. BROSNAN: Well, Al Gore always says there's a campaign season and there's a non-campaign season, so I think you would see a different style in government depending on the circumstances. In Tennessee, he never really had a very hard election after his first race for Congress. I think the style you're seeing now is the same style you saw in 1988 in the Democratic primary, in 1992 in the vice presidential campaign, and again in 1996.

Now I think as President, in areas of foreign policy and defense I think he would try very hard to achieve a bipartisan consensus. I think in domestic matters he would try to first to achieve that consensus through education, meeting with the opposite sides, bringing in the experts. If that didn't work, he would then take a partisan tone and mount a public campaign to try to force the issue.

MR. DIONNE: Congressman Slattery, could you talk first of all generally about your experiences with Gore in the House, and in particular, how did he relate to Democratic colleagues and to the House leadership? How much did he go off on his own, how much was he a team player? Could you give us an overview of your time with him?

CONGRESSMAN SLATTERY: My experience with Vice President Gore really goes back to 1983 when we served together on the Energy and Commerce Committee, and I was a new Member and then-Congressman Gore had served in the Congress for several years, and I immediately determined that this Congressman Al Gore was smart, he was a very capable communicator, he was a master of legislative detail, and he was tough, and he wasn't unwilling to really take the battle to the opposition when it was necessary to do so.

He also was clearly ambitious, and I think it's safe to say that he was well respected by his colleagues, and his colleagues viewed him as someone who was certainly on the rise and was very capable. He engaged, I thought, very well with his colleagues at that time. He played basketball in the gym and was, I think, generally well liked.

And I think that if someone was to ask me how Al Gore's presidency would be fundamentally different than President Clinton's with respect to this issue of governing, it would be in his relations with Congress. I think that on Inauguration Day there would be a fundamental change in the relationship between the executive branch and the congressional branch, and I think it would be based in large part on the fact that Members of Congress know Al Gore and have known him for years. They respect him. They may not agree with his position on issues, but they respect the fact that he has arrived at these through a thoughtful process, and I think that all the other issues that have been on the table the last few years, that have sort of poisoned the relationship with Congress, would be over, too.

So I think a much more positive relationship with Congress could be anticipated in a Gore administration regardless of which party is controlling the Congress.

MR DIONNE: And with Republicans, too, because I was struck by the same thing David said earlier, that we have both heard from a lot of Republicans that they see Gore as a much more partisan figure certainly than Bradley, and then other Democrats. Do you share that perception?

CONGRESSMAN SLATTERY: I think that Vice President Gore is a centrist Democrat. Here's a person who came out of Tennessee, for goodness sakes, and I think that he takes that sort of centrist philosophy with him to the decision-making process.

And I do believe, certainly, that Vice President Gore is a person who does have strong personally held convictions about issues, whether it's the environment, the economy, the communications issues of the day, and he will fight for those issues. And to the extent that that fight draws partisan fire, he welcomes it, and I don't think he will back away from that sort of a partisan showdown.

MR. DIONNE: Senator Pressler wants to come in.

SENATOR PRESSLER: I don't think that he would govern as a centrist Democrat. I think that he would govern as a liberal Democrat, the way we define it. And this presidential election, if it's Bush and Gore, will be kind of a traditional, for the first time we've had, a contest between a liberal and a conservative in the sense of using those terms, although everybody tries to describe themselves as centrist. I mean, George Bush talks about compassionate conservativism, and the Democrats, everybody sort of campaigns as a centrist.

But everything in Gore's record in the House and Senate, when it came down to it, he was very much a traditional liberal Democrat on domestic issues certainly.

CONGRESSMAN SLATTERY: I disagree with that.

MR. BROOKS: If we could hold off on some of the issues, I think we'll try to get to some specific issues later on, but I think this question of partisanship and how the town would--the mood of the town if there was a Gore presidency, I think that's something that we need to stay on for a few more questions. Why don't we go to Woody Brosnan?

MR. BROSNAN: Well, I think he got along better in the House than he did in the Senate. He got to the Senate, and two years after he was there, he was running for President. Ronald Reagan was President, George Bush was President for most of those years. It was a very partisan time.

Secondly, you would go to a hearing, particularly in the Commerce Committee, Fritz Hollings would have a hearing on something like the space program, and the hearing would start, Hollings would do his thing and the other Senators would do their thing. You get down to the end of the row, and there was Gore with the facts, the pointed questions, and the next day's paper, there would be Gore quoted all over the place. That stirs resentment. I think he got over that after a few years and--

[Laughter.]

MR. BROSNAN: I mean maybe they got over it after a few years, because I think by the time he left his relations were much better with those Senators.

MR. BROOKS : John Harris, have there been times in the last couple of years where Vice President Gore has gone to the Hill and been particularly effective or ineffective in lobbying some piece of legislation?

MR. HARRIS: Oh, I'm sure there have, although I don't--I never really saw that as being his principle role, as a sort of legislative craftsman for the White House.

Just to follow on this discussion, the episode that really struck me was in the '95-'96 government shutdowns, when both President Clinton and Vice President Gore would be in the room with Republicans when they came to negotiate, and it used to really drive the Republicans to distraction. They would come out and they would say, "Look, we can deal with President Clinton, but this Gore is getting on our nerves and he's being totally unconstructive in these meetings and he's giving us lectures rather than negotiating."

And part of this may have been a deliberate tactic, to be good cop/bad cop and to rile the Republicans up. I'm sure there was entertainment from the vantage point of the Clinton White House. But I think it also highlights something that's a genuine point, and it's on the point of what we're talking about, is that Gore in my experience does tend to frame issues in very moralistic ways. "We're right, they're wrong. We're a force on the side of good. They're evil." And President Clinton I think views most things as sort of infinitely negotiable.

[Laughter.]

MR. HARRIS: I don't mean that as negative as the laughter suggests. I think Vice President Gore, by temperament and by political style, takes a sort of moralistic view toward issues and toward the world, and that's where this reputation for partisanship comes from. And I suspect when there's differences, when there's clashes, that would be something we would see in a Gore presidency as well.

MR. DIONNE: Ron Klain is itching to speak for good over evil.

MR. KLAIN: Let me go back to the '95-'96 government shutdown, the budget talks. You know, it wasn't so much a case of "We're right and they're wrong" as he knew what he was talking about and they just didn't. You know, it was shocking how little they understood the ramifications of their own proposals, the extent to which what they were trying to do, perhaps it was the lobbyist-written provisions that they were defending or whatever it was, it was shocking time and again that all the Vice President was doing was simply bringing information and facts to bear on the issues, and the Republicans were often confounded for an answer.

Having said that, I also think, though, he has proven time and again that he can work with Republicans. In fact, his experience with Larry and Larry's staff on producing the Telecommunications Act of 1996 is a very good example of that. Very highly contentious issues, very difficult issues, and we found compromises, we found a middle ground, we got that done. Elaine's work on the National Performance Review, which often involved working with a lot of Republicans, is another good example of that.

And I think of course in the past few years the Republicans have targeted him, particularly on the Hill, as they see him now as the Democratic front-runner, potential Democratic nominee, and it made it a little harder to work with him over the past couple of years.

But there is no question, I think, in his career in the House and the Senate and in his years in the vice presidency, that he has shown he can work with Republicans, he can get things done, but not at the price of sacrificing his principles. He is a man of great principle. He stands on those principles. He fights for those principles. He tries to bring people along. And I think it's the exact right balance for our next President. I think it's a very sound balance for presidential government.

MR. BROOKS: Who was particularly ill-informed in '95-'96? Was it Lott or Gingrich or Armey?

MR. KLAIN: I think I will spare--

MR.BROOKS: I'm trying to help build the grounds of bipartisanship for the Gore administration.

MR. KLAIN: I think I will spare individuals, spare individuals that. But the other thing I get a chuckle out of all this is the suggestion that it was somehow a kind of a rosy bipartisan season in late 1995. When Senator Dole was busy running his campaign against President Clinton in the gaps between our budget negotiations, it was hardly a general scene of rosy bipartisanship that the Vice President was bespoiling.

It was a difficult atmosphere. The Republicans had shut down the government, were trying to pressure the President politically to, you know, get rid of Medicaid, among other things. We didn't yield. It was difficult. We prevailed. But I think that the Vice President's role in that is something that's very admirable and speaks well of the kind of President he would be.

MR. DIONNE: Before we move on, I wanted to ask Elaine, what's wrong with accepting Senator Pressler's premise? What's wrong with saying Al Gore is a liberal?

MS. KAMARCK: Oh, I think that the term is kind of an old-fashioned term. I think that Al Gore has been a very active member of an administration that has had a very sound fiscal policy that has brought us out of deficits and into surpluses. He has been part of an administration that has ended a welfare system that many people thought was failing; part of an administration that has used force aggressively around the world when it was thought that that was the right thing for America to do. He's part of an administration that has been sensitive to the needs of the all-volunteer forces and sensitive to the needs for new weapons systems, et cetera, in other words, many of the issues--not to mention Reinventing Government, which involves the largest peacetime downsizing of the government in history.

None of those things would one associate with a sort of old-fashioned liberal point of view. He is not a big government guy. He is, however, a believer in activist government and a believer in using the government for--to protect people and for legitimate and good purposes, but he's not a bureaucracy builder.

I mean, all of his work in Reinventing Government goes precisely in the other direction. He believes in regulation when it's necessary to protect people's health and people's safety, but he is not--he is always looking for market-based ways to do regulation and alternative ways to do regulation. I think he is basically a very modern Democrat and a very centrist Democrat, and would govern using the successful governing strategies that I think you've seen for the past seven years.

MR. BROOKS: Let me follow up on that. One of the things I like to do every year, one of my favorite events is the annual meeting of the Democratic Leadership Council, the moderate, the centrist DLC, which I think, Elaine Kamarck, you have been really one of the pioneering forces behind. You meet so many nice lawyers at those meetings.

And one of the things I've been noticing the last couple of years, I think it was two, two meetings ago, there were some great speeches by Senators Kerrey on education, educational choice, really revolutionizing the educational system and from Bob Kerrey, on Social Security, which was a sort of privatization. And especially at DLC meetings you get a lot of very inspiring and radical thought about the entitlements programs. And at each of those meetings, Vice President Gore was the final speaker and suddenly all the talk about entitlement reform dropped off when he mounted the stage. And there is some concern that despite his DLC background the sort of proposals he's proposing this time are not sort of the entitlement reform that are sort of the meat and potatoes of the DLC but are something much more close to traditional AFL-CIO entitlement reforms.

And I see Ron already shaking his head but I wait to be enlightened first from Elaine and maybe then Ron.

MS. KAMARCK: Well, Ron, if you would like to jump into this, you can go right ahead.

MR. KLAIN: Look, the Vice President is running of all the candidates in this race, on the soundest fiscal platform of the candidates left in this race. He has proposed, greater than any other candidate in this race, setting aside the largest share of the surplus for Social Security and then the next largest share of the surplus to save Medicare. And there's nothing we could do to put these two entitlement programs on sounder footing for the future than the Vice President's Social Security and Medicare [inaudible].

MR. BROOKS: I’m talking about reshaping them.

MR. KLAIN: Now, look, in terms of reshaping them, he's talked about reforms in both programs but fundamentally, fundamentally the most important thing we could do is build a fiscal architecture that is going to have the funds to deal with the retirement of the baby boom. And on that issue, he isn't taking a back seat to anyone in this race. And, in fact, he is the unique leader between both the Democrats and the Republicans on that issue. So, I really think that the critique is wrong.

MR. BROOKS: Just maybe to turn to Elaine. That's a credible argument if that's, maybe that's what we should be doing, but it seems, am I wrong in thinking that's not the approach I've been reading in the New Democrat, which is the DLC magazine?

MS. KAMARCK: I think that the New Democrat serves a very, very useful function in putting out ideas out there and defining alternatives that are out there. Just because Al Gore would govern generally as a centrist and as a new Democrat doesn't mean that he's going to adopt every policy proposal that is put in the blueprint or in the New Democrat magazine.

There will be a long debate about Social Security in this country as there always will be. There will be a bipartisan consensus as we move forward and look at where the program is going. I think that I agree with Ron, I think Al Gore is the only candidate in this race who has a sensible centrist fiscal policy that first and foremost protects the two big entitlement programs, Social Security and Medicare and I think that he should be given credit for that.

Beyond that, the DLC isn't a Bible. It puts out good ideas and it serves an important role in the policy debate. It has a general philosophy but I don't think that anybody would expect Al Gore or anyone else to agree with every single piece of policy in those proposals. I've written many of them, myself, and don't even ask candidates to agree with them.

CONGRESSMAN SLATTERY: Can I add a footnote to this? I remember in 1993, when the new Clinton/Gore Administration was attempting to find the votes to pass the original budget plan which many economists believe was rather significant in perhaps encouraging the era of economic prosperity we've experienced since then. And I can assure you that at that time Vice President Gore was certainly deeply committed to the passage of that, deeply committed to deficit reduction and I think he believes in his heart and soul that a solid economic fiscal policy that results in balanced budgets is at the base of governing this country.

And I believe that he sees that as a very, very important issue and, therefore, when I see him taking the positions that I believe are politically risky in opposition to what even Senator McCain calls irresponsible tax cuts being advanced by Governor Bush, I think this is an indication of the kind of governing we can see from Vice President Gore. He is willing to say, no, to something in a political campaign that is unpopular and as President, I think we could count on him to use the Presidential veto if necessary to prevent the passage of irresponsible fiscal programs that may be politically popular.

And I think we're seeing that unfold even today in this campaign. And I think that that's the kind of thing that Ron referred to earlier about taking principled positions that are consistent with long standing views about basic issues. And this basic issue is the economy of the country, the fiscal policy being in order and the need to retain that balance if we're going to govern effectively.

And I think that's something that he feels very strongly and believes very strongly.

MR. BROSNAN: I think there's a tendency in this town to view Al Gore as someone whose political career just started with Bill Clinton. In fact, there is a lineage going back to, through his father to Franklin Roosevelt to Cordell Hull, who represented the District that his father did, and you see that throughout his lifetime.

His father's lifetime rating for the Americans for Democratic Action was 65. Al Gore's was 66. He voted to, in 1988, to require work for somebody on welfare. He voted for a balanced budget amendment. I think the difficulty will be, as a centrist fiscal person, how he gets that done because while he would vote for some of those things he also found it very difficult to vote against a lot of the spending programs. He voted for most of the major defense items, the B-2, the Sea Wolf, and he didn't vote to cut very many other programs either.

MR. BROOKS: Why don't we stick on domestic policy and go to the health care side of the first Clinton Administration. I think everybody on this panel probably has something to say with how Al Gore conducted himself during that fight. Why don't we start with Senator Pressler. Do you have memories of how that was waged and how he was involved?

SENATOR PRESSLER: Yes. Very much so. And let me say that when I use the terms, liberal and conservative, I'm not doing that in a negative sense to criticize anybody. In fact, from a political science point of view, I think the American people should have a choice. And I would rather our parties were more aligned along those lines, which I think they are.

But when I say that Al Gore will govern as a traditional liberal Democrat, it seems as though everybody is afraid of the word, liberal or conservative. And I say that in the sense of based on his approach to different things during the health care debate or during the telcom debate where he wanted more universal service, which is more government activity, all the tax debates of the late '70 and early '80s he was very much at the core of the liberal group in the United States Senate.

So, when he's made his own decisions, when he was a Senator and a Congressman--now, since he's been Vice President he's muted on the environment and on some health care issues, but I think he would revert to and be very much where his heart is and that is as a liberal Democrat. And I disagree that he is not a big government guy. I mean in the telcom bill and Republicans worked with him. We worked together very well but we all had to make compromises there. Very much for government involvement.

So, and in the health care area.

MR. BROOKS: So, maybe we--we might as well stick with telcom since we're on it and then get to health. But, as Senator Pressler, I think we've all read there were 16 stories in today's Washington Post about the AOL/Time Warner merger and I'm surprised we're all here and not reading them all.

But maybe you could describe specifically what sort of government intervention did he see in the telcom?

SENATOR PRESSLER: Well, for example, he was very much for universal service, for finding ways to create a fund, a semi-government fund, I think, to provide inner-city people with and rural people and others, through the use of traditional government approach.

It was almost like a 1930's type regulatory approach and we got a compromise in the middle. But clearly when as a Senator he always came down--he was always in the core of the liberal Democratic Senators, and I think that is the way he would govern. And I don't say that in a critical way. I think the American people should have a choice and I think they will have a clear choice if it's Gore versus Bush, a liberal and a conservative.

CONGRESSMAN SLATTERY: Well, let me just grab this thought here for a second because I served for 12 years on the Communications Committee on the House side, and wrote some very small provisions of that telcom bill even though I had since left the Congress. But let me just hit this issue of universal service as a test of liberalism.

What this is all about is making sure that whatever telecommunications policy is pursued in this country that people in rural areas of Tennessee and Indiana and Ohio and Texas and California, even, have access to really state-of-the-art communications services. It also means that people in under-developed areas of the country, in rural areas and urban areas, have equal access to state-of-the-art telecommunications services.

And, yes, Vice President Gore was deeply committed to that principle, as was President Clinton and, you know, something, if that makes you a liberal, I think that Vice President Gore will say, I will be happy to take that liberal mantle with respect to communications policy on the issue of universal service. And that is precisely the kind of government activity that you can expect, I think, from a President Gore, where he is saying, yes, government does have an important role to play in making sure that poor people and rural people in this country have access to the Internet, have access to state-of-the-art telecommunications services all over this country and the government has a role to make sure that happens.

Now, if that is liberal governance, then so be it. And I think that Al Gore will be the kind of person that would say, I don't care what you call it, it is good for the country, that's what government should be doing, and that's what I'm going to fight for.

[Simultaneous conversation.]

SENATOR PRESSLER: I agree and that illustrates my point. He is a traditional liberal - government involvement..

MR. DIONNE: Let me go back to Elaine on health care. We are getting a preview of the Fall campaign should Bush and Gore be the nominees. Elaine, could we go back to health care for a second?

Ron, did you have a burning thing you wanted to say here?

MR. KLAIN: Well, just one very quick thing I think combines style and substance a little bit. I was thinking about some of the citizens we've had. Something Woody said really struck me, which was how much sometimes in Washington we see Al Gore as having been invented in 1993 and ignoring his entire career and his roots and his history. And I think what often gets ignored with that is how much of what he thinks about the issues comes from his personal experiences, his background, the people he has encountered along the way.

And a couple of things we discussed this morning, on universal service, you know, he always thinks about his rural constituents in Tennessee, bringing low-cost phone service to them, the history of the TVA, the experience there, the successes there, and bringing that now to the era of the Internet and wiring every classroom and every school to the information superhighway. And bringing information to the children of the smaller communities in Tennessee that didn't have this information that others had in the past.

Or, or, or on entitlement reform. You know, David, I've seen him with factory workers who spend all day on their feet, who think that the entitlement reform debate about whether or not the retirement should be raised from 65 to 67, doesn't speak to their lives, doesn't speak to the sort of experiences they've had and how tired and worn out their bodies are by the time they reach the age of 50 and see how much that resonates with Al Gore.

And in the Family Medical Leave Act, another example, where I think some of his experiences being in the hospital with Albert and talking to other families and what they were going through with extended stays in the hospital, what happened to their jobs. I think all these things, I think there is a tendency to think of the Vice President as only a policy intellect and not to recognize how much of his views come from his experiences, his values, and sort of people he's encountered in his life. I think it's a very big part of him, too.

MR. DIONNE: Elaine, could we go back to the health care battle in the Clinton Administration, or I should say with the Congress. But it's partly the health care battle within the Clinton Administration I want to talk about.

You were reinventing government at that moment. Then there were a lot of reports about tensions between the Vice President and Mrs. Clinton and her operation over health care, whether this priority was right, whether they were doing it right, whether this was overshadowing the reinventing government project. Could you take us back to that time and talk about what those tensions tell us about Gore?

MS. KAMARCK: Look, it was natural that this would happen. But they were not tensions about substance, they were not tensions about policy. It was literally there were two major initiatives. They were coming to fruition at about the same time and the question was and there was one President's schedule to announce them. And really what you see as a much larger issue was an issue of when should these be announced, when should they be scheduled, and which ones should the President put his attention to at what point?

And I think we reached a compromise that basically the reinventing Government was announced right after Labor Day. We issued the report. And then because reinventing Government was not one piece of legislation like health care, reinventing Government was literally hundreds of pieces of legislation, some of which are still being passed, the reinventing government process then went on for really the next 4, 5, 6 years and it's still going on.

Health care then, however, was announced about a month later. And that was one piece of legislation and that piece of legislation was fought very intensely in the Spring of 1994. The White House can do more than one thing, okay, but the President can only be in one place at one time. So, there was an initial argument about which would go first.

On the other hand, while the health care legislation was being considered by the Congress in the Spring of '94, the Vice President was very active lobbying the Congress to pass the buyout bill. And the buyout bill was critical in Al Gore's ability to reduce the size of the Federal Government without having layoffs or without firing people. And that was a very, very important milestone for him and for the reinventing Government initiatives.

So, once the President was used in the announcement the Vice President really then took his legislative package and worked it through that Spring of 1994, while much of the West Wing apparatus was busy working on the health care plan which, of course, the Vice President worked on as well.

MR. DIONNE: But you were of the view, and I always took it at the time that the Vice President was of the view that the Administration, if you will, squandered a chance to use reinventing Government as a motif for other programs and that in the end an initiative that might have gotten significant, might have shaped people's perceptions of the Administration that the chance of doing that was lost. Is that fair?

MS. KAMARCK: It was always hard to get a lot of attention for reinventing government. Because basically, with the exception of people who live in Washington, D.C., the federal government is a very foreign, very, very distant place. And God bless the federal page of The Washington Post, which covered reinventing government. But other than that, no major newspaper ever covered the efforts to downsize the bureaucracy, the efforts to streamline, the efforts to cut the size of the government. So it was very difficult.

I mean, I think, yes, in theory, it would have been nice, and I think it would have helped the health care proposal if there had been more attention to reinventing government. I think it was very, very hard to get that attention. I think we worked at it in a variety of ways, and I think that basically were not interested in writing about it, people weren't interested in covering it. With the exception of Steve Barr, no major paper ever assigned a reporter to this initiative, even though it was, arguably, the longest running initiative of the Clinton administration and has the most pieces of legislation and has touched the most pieces of the government and, therefore, people's lives.

MR. DIONNE: For the benefit of our audience, Steve Barr was the Washington Post reporter who covered reinventing government.

MS. KAMARCK: Right.

MR. DIONNE: David?

MR. BROOKS: Let's stick with health care a little longer. Maybe Ron--were there moments when Vice President Gore warned other people in the administration, "We've made a mistake here? We haven't brought Congress in early enough. This isn't going right. This is too prepackaged"? Was there a moment like that or was there something he said afterwards that he learned from the whole experience?

MR. KLAIN: Well, I think if you want to see what the Vice President learned from the experience and what kind of president he would be on the issue of health care, I think the best way to judge that, David, is the kind of health care proposal he's made in this campaign. He's proposed to cover every child with health insurance through the CHIP program and to eventually reach their parents, he's proposed to do it in a way that is fiscally responsible, that's based on programs that work, that involves extending Medicare prescription benefits so senior citizens will get prescription drug coverage, it involves saving Medicare.

I mean, he has laid out a comprehensive health care proposal that I think is both sensible, and fiscally responsible, and compassionate and, again, I think that's the best way to judge the kind of president he would be on this issue.

MR. BROOKS: What about at the time? Woody, do you--

MR. BROSNAN: Well, I think one thing that made it very difficult for the vice president was there was a fellow in town named Jim Cooper from Tennessee who is a leading Democratic opponent of the Clinton opponent of the Clinton health care plan. He had an alternative, and in Tennessee he was viewed as somewhat of a protege of the vice president, a very close friend, someone that he wanted appointed in his place. I think that made it very difficult for him for another reason.

MR. DIONNE: Could I, Ron, I want to--you said earlier that you're not a psychiatrist, you're a lawyer. So you're the perfect person to deal with no controlling legal authority. Could you talk to us about how did that happen? Because when you go back to that moment when the vice president had that news conference, there was an immediate big drop in the polls, and he was obviously very uneasy at that moment. If a moment like that were repeated in his presidency, it's probably a moment he would pray that would never be repeated in his presidency.

Could you talk about the whole decision-making process that went into that news conference and how the vice president reached that moment?

MR. KLAIN: Well, I think that The Washington Post had published charges about his fund-raising practices and, unfortunately, some wrong information had come out, and I think he felt the need to go out and set the record straight and to tell the truth about what he had done and to answer questions about it and to face those questions in the White House briefing room.

And I think if you go back and look at this press conference, other than the repetitive use of an unfortunate phrase, I think, by and large, it meets that standard. And, in fact, the information that came out in the first couple of days I think wound up being the information that wound up resolving that matter, which is that what he had done was, in fact, make some fund-raising phone calls, that he had made them in a way that was legally appropriate. He's made it clear he wasn't going to do that from the White House any more. That matter has been investigated, it's been resolved, it's been disposed of, and I think his truthfulness and his candor in handling it has been very helpful in that regard, EJ.

MR. DIONNE: Other than Dan Marino's pass in the fourth quarter, I mean, what--could you talk about how--why was that phrase stuck in his head? What is it about his style, his approach, that led to that moment? Can you enlighten us a little more, or Elaine or anyone who knows him here.

MS. KAMARCK: Look, I mean, the fact was that this was an unprecedented legal situation. The fact was that this was a law that was written before there were telephones. And so, and it was written to apply to a situation where a federal worker might walk around in a building on a federal property.

So I think that in the discussions, right, it was very clear that nobody quite knew whether this was right, whether this was wrong, what the law would be. Nothing like this had ever happened. I think that's why the phrase probably stuck in his head.

But I think the larger point is he went out there, he told the truth, he said what he had done, it was a murky area of the law. Obviously, he fessed up to everything, and that was the end of it, and I don't think that other than people being fixated with the phrase, I don't think that it sheds light badly on him at all? I think, in fact, he had the courage to go up and say, "Look. This is what I did. At the time I thought what I was doing was legal. If there's any question about it, I won't do it again."

MR. BROOKS: Anybody can have a bad--go ahead, Woody.

MR. BROSNAN: I didn't hear Ron say that anybody on the staff recommended that he do it. And I think it was wholly his own decision. It was in keeping with the tradition he'd had back as a senator and as a candidate in 1988 to when questions were raised about his character, to try to address them immediately. And he had, I think, the confidence that he could handle that, and he wasn't very prepared. The phrase was technically correct, but politically incorrect, as it turned out. And I think it shows a concern that perhaps there are times when he has such self-confidence that he may go into areas and do things that he shouldn't, and I think that's more in the communication area than in the policy area--why I think he's very, very careful.

MR. BROOKS: Anybody could have--

MR. KLAIN: I'm sorry. But, Woody, I guess to some extent I agree; to some extent, I disagree.

I find it always ironic, when I hear this criticism of his March 2nd press conference, because it always come either before or after or within an hour of a conversation about how people are frustrated with the Clinton administration's general unwillingness to be answerable for things that are wrong, to quickly put the facts out, to speak straight, to take questions, so on and so forth.

And I think people have to choose between the kind of artful, careful phrasing and spinning that comes through time and the careful development of arguments over weeks, and weeks and weeks. And what the vice president did that day, which was stand before the White House press corps, one of the most, shall we say, John, difficult collections of reporters in America--

MR. HARRIS: But pleasant.

MR. KLAIN: But pleasant.

[Laughter.]

MR. KLAIN: But likeable, in a very personable sort of way, you know, you know. And very good looking too.

And take their questions in a very difficult situation. And I think that that's the sort of leadership that we should want in our next president. And the fact that maybe the answers weren't as polished as they could have been or the language wasn't as well-crafted as it could have been, doesn't take away from the fact that he did what I think a leader should do, which is own up to what happened, answer the questions, take the tough questions and try to put the matter to rest.

MR. DIONNE: Before, David, I want you to go, I just wanted to ask the organizers if they could bring out the microphone because, at some point, we want to go to the audience, and it would be helpful to have the mike up front here.

David?

DAVID: Why don't I just stick on this for one second. Anybody, whether or not that was a good press conference or not or the health care was a good thing to do or not, anybody can have a bad press conference, a bad thing. What I'm trying to get a sense is how, whether Vice President Gore has the self-distance to step back, say to his staff or the people around him, I messed that one up, and here's how I'm going to learn. And I was wondering if you could just give us an anecdote of something like that, where he really did demonstrate that self-distance, which you need as president.

MR. KLAIN: Well, I think in that case--for those of you this is going to be a uniquely Washington sort of anecdote--but in that case he went to the Grid Iron Club or the Grid Iron dinner a couple weeks later and I think gave a very self-deprecating, humorous, self-critique of his own press conference that brought the house down, had people in stitches and recognized that.

In this campaign alone, in the first debate, when he was asked what the biggest mistake he had made recently was, he talked about his comments about the Internet, and I thought did so in a way that was very self-perceptive and humorous. He has the ability to know when he made mistakes. He talked about, in fact, in the most recent debate in New Hampshire, the need for a president to acknowledge when he's made mistakes and recover from that. And I think he's developed that quality as a leader.

MR. BROOKS: Could I ask Woody Brosnan, before we get to the questions about the social issues, because they popped up in this campaign, if I'm correct, Al Gore began his term in Congress opposing federal funding for abortions; in 1984, supporting an amendment that defined the fetus as a human life and being not quite a hard-core pro-life person, but tending more in that direction. He has evolved in the other direction.

Have you noticed a general evolution on his views in social policy; in particular, gays in the military and things like that over the years he's been here?

MR. BROSNAN: Well, there are a lot of issues that come up now that weren't issues back then. His position certainly evolved on abortion, but so did a lot of other Democrats and, frankly, so have a lot of Republicans. So I think you would expect that positions would evolve from the 1980s to the late 1990s. Sure, they have. I think there's a core that's still there, but some positions have changed as more information has been developed.

MR. DIONNE: What would--how do you explain the change on abortion, Woody, which I don't think is a matter of information so much? Or anyone else on the panel if--

MR. BROSNAN: Running for president might have had something to do with it, but I think, frankly, there were some changes in the Tennessee population. I think there was a change going from a rural district to a statewide Senate situation, and then I think his listening to women had an impact on him, including his wife.

MR. DIONNE: I'm going to ask Elaine on, if you will, the flip side of this; his interest in faith-based social action. If you read the speech he gave on this is, in so many ways, similar to the things Governor Bush has said about this. How did he come around to that?

And in terms of decision-making, I think a lot of us were taken by that story in the Wall Street Journal that talks about the vice president staging a debate between Bill Galston, who supported this initiative, and Chris Edley, another advisor who opposed this initiative, and that Gore set them up to argue the issue through. Is that a common thing for Gore to do in making decisions on issues?

MS. KAMARCK: Well, he likes to understand every side of an issue so he will frequently--Ron's been in this position, too, he'll frequently use the staff to play devil's advocate and see, look at something 360 degrees, really look at something. But the faith-based position came really out of his experiences with Welfare to Work. His contribution to the Clinton administration's effort to get welfare mothers to work was to found a coalition of organizations that would serve as mentoring groups for women who are making the transition from welfare to work. Many of the groups that ended up in the vice president's coalition were faith-based groups.

And as he moved around the country, this was particularly in '97, before he really started to run for president, as he moved around the country and saw the kind of work that these groups were doing and spoke to the former welfare mothers that were part of these groups, he became convinced that in certain areas, faith-based groups played an important supplement to the social safety net.

Now, the big difference with the Republicans is that Al Gore does not see faith-based groups taking over the role of the government in forming the social safety net. He sees it really as a supplement in particular areas where we have seen faith do some really pretty remarkable things in people's lives: drug addiction, moving from welfare to work, juvenile delinquency. He would not use this in a general sense in the way I think some Republicans, like Ashcroft and Bush, would.

MR. BROOKS: Does that mean that--

MS. KAMARCK: But he does see it very specifically.

MR. BROOKS: --that Bush would give actual subsidies to explicitly evangelical organizations that do this drug work and other sorts of social work?

MS. KAMARCK: The charitable choice provision would let there be federal grants to certain--to faith-based groups that do things in the area of, say, welfare to work or drug addiction. And it's under a slightly different legal framework than most of the federal government contracting, and that's the genesis of it was the 1996 Welfare bill.

MR. BROOKS: But they wouldn't have to cover the crucifix up. They could be explicitly--

MS. KAMARCK: They wouldn't have to cover the crucifix up. On the other hand, there still are constitutional protections. They couldn't turn down someone if they didn't want to partake. Say, if somebody said, "I don't want to go to mass," they couldn't refuse to give them the methadone or--so there are protections for people in those, as well.

MR. DIONNE: Professor Jones?

PROFESSOR CHARLES O. JONES: There's a special matter that comes up in the case of Gore that is a rather large presence, a very vigorous presence in the form of a next president.

In Bush's case, Reagan faded away, literally, 3,000 miles away, but he had hard-core supporters on Capitol Hill who began to frame and limit what Bush thought he could do. There aren't any hard-core Clinton supporters on Capitol Hill, to my knowledge, but he is not about to fade away.

So here he will be, relatively young, there to--still campaigning, in my judgment, for something, and certainly framing some of what Gore may think he can do. How will he handle that?

MS. KAMARCK: Look, I think that after eight years as vice president and after being a senator and being a congressman, Al Gore will be very well prepared to run his own government. He has very clear ideas what he wants to do in the government. He has a good relationship with President Clinton, but I don't think he will have any trouble being totally in charge of a government, perhaps in a way that we've never even seen a president be in charge of a government.

I think Al Gore is probably the first candidate for president who has ever had the depth of experience in the federal government. That is really unprecedented. And I don't think that he'll be overshadowed by, I mean, Bill Clinton's a wonderful guy. Many of us love him, in spite of all his faults, but I don't think there's any chance that an Al Gore presidency would be dominated or overshadowed by Bill Clinton, private citizen.

MR. HARRIS: If the First Lady wins her race for the Senate and is also serving at the same time as a Gore presidency, I think that's going to lead to a very interesting dynamic, and without overstating the metaphor, I think it could be something akin to the government-in-waiting or the alternative government that Robert Kennedy established under the Johnson era.

MR. DIONNE: That's very interesting.

Steve Hess?

MR. HESS: This has been fascinating. Here in Washington, where we're always asking the press to talk about substance, and they're always talking about process, we ask a distinguished panel to talk about process and all they want to talk about is substance.

[Laughter.]

MR. HESS: It's sort of nice. But let me get back to process.

He has been the vice president under Bill Clinton for seven years. What do we think we know about this question that Elaine just raises, about how he would run the government. How--would he organize the White House in the same way? Would his advisory style and system be the same? Would he deal with the cabinet in the same way? Would his appointment system and process be the same? What can we expect that he would do differently than President Clinton has done?

MR. DIONNE: Thank you to Steve for bringing us back to the subject at hand.

[Laughter.]

MR. DIONNE: Larry Pressler.

SENATOR PRESSLER: One area I think he--and I say this in a complimentary way--I think he would have a staff that would engage with Congress on all of the amendments that are in the committees. And if a committee chairman or a committee member said, "What's the administration's position on this?" they'd find out right away. Right now, that's not the case.

So I think he could collect policy "wonks," if you want to call them or very in-depth people who just love the issues, and he would engage with Congress. That would be one way that he would govern differently than presently is being done.

MR. BROOKS: Woody?

MR. BROSNAN: I think use more e-mail.

[Laughter.]

MR. BROSNAN: I think we'd probably get sick of the term "e-government," about as sick as we are of "e-commerce."

[Laughter.]

MR. BROSNAN: I think he would make decisions more quickly. I don't think you'd see the secretary of labor being asked about Haiti and the secretary of state being asked whether he should sign a welfare reform bill. I think he'll look to the experts in a certain field. I don't think you're going to have a cabinet-type government, where everybody's debating every issue. And, in general, I think that's where he's--he'll focus in specific areas.

MR. DIONNE: Elaine or Ron, could you take a shot at Steve's question?

MR. BROOKS: Ron, working with Bill Kristol, I've been taught that the vice president's chief of staff is usually the smartest person in the government.

[Laughter.]

MR. BROOKS: And I know Ron follows in that proud tradition. Maybe you could describe--

MR. KLAIN: I see a set-up coming here in a big way.

[Laughter.]

MR. BROOKS: I know Crystal is going to kill me when I get downstairs.

Maybe you could describe just what--does he like meetings, does he like the phone, does he like early morning, does he like late-night philosophical calls? What sort of guy is he up close and personal?

MR. KLAIN: Well, I think in terms of style, he's very efficient. He gets through an enormous amount of material very quickly. Woody made a comment about e-mail. He certainly would be our first e-mail friendly president, and I think it goes without saying the first president to carry a Palm Pilot on his belt.

He, I think--I think what's interesting about Al Gore is he does reach out to a broad number of people directly for information. I think he gets a lot of information directly from his policy advisors, his political advisors, his chief of staff. He's more of a modern-style CEO that way than kind of an old-style, up the chain-of-command, sort of person.

He loves to debate ideas. He loves to think about ideas. He's a voracious reader. He reads a huge amount of briefing materials about issues, and I think comes to the issues incredibly well prepared. So I think, in terms of the style of his presidency, in the debate with Senator Bradley now, he often uses the line, "The presidency is not an academic exercise," meaning that he believes he's got some things he's going to fight for, he's going to get elected and fight for those things. He's not going to be ponderous about them.

And I think that's the sort of president you'd see, a president that brings the information, has an agenda, interacts with folks and then tries to get it done.

MS. KAMARCK: Can I just add something to that about the presidency not being an academic exercise?

I mean, I think he's also trying to convey something else. When you set along a policy path, not only do you want to know what you want to do, you want to know what's going to go wrong, what are the problems that are going to happen? Who's going to be hurt if you do "X"? What happens?

And it's a way of thinking about policy, it's a way of thinking about the presidency that is anticipatory. So that when you are two months into your plan and somebody says, "Well, you can't do that. What about X, Y and Z," you know what the answer is. You know what you're going to propose to do that.

And I think there are other candidates in this race who literally have not thought through their plan, who do not have answers. I don't want to get into the--sort of rehash the debate--

MR. BROOKS: Other candidates? That was plural. There's only one other.

[Laughter.]

MS. KAMARCK: Well, but I mean, no, I mean other Democrats and Republicans, but who have not thought through the answers. And I think this comes from the experience of actually governing, which Al Gore has. He thinks through not just today's press conference, but the press conference that'll happen two months from now as things evolve. And I think that that's one of his best traits as a leader.

MR. DIONNE: Could I ask Congressman Slattery, in a sense following up on Steve, Mr. Gore often seemed interested in highly technical issues that seem more technocratic than controversial, even though some of them, such as global warming, became controversial. In the Weekly Standard, which I assume, David, I can rely upon as a source, there is a Democratic Congress--

MR. DIONNE: There is a Democratic Congressperson who served with Gore for more than a decade who is quoted, I assume it's not you, who said the following: "If you look at his career, particularly in the House, it was a career based more so than almost any other I know of on noncontroversial issues like liver transplants. The Gulf War was one of the only issues I can recall when he took a position that was very controversial, but then he was not actively involved in the effort to persuade other people. It was solely a matter of how we would vote."

Could you talk about your reaction to that line of argument about Gore and what that would say about how he might be president--this interest in highly technical issues that could keep him out of political controversy.

CONGRESSMAN SLATTERY: Well, in the early 1980s, I think that then-Congressman Gore was clearly one of the very few in the Congress who really had his mind around these emerging Information-Age issues. He was one of the first members of Congress that was really talking about the information super highway, and he was one of the few members of Congress that really understood what the Internet was all about.

And so I think he deserves a lot of credit for being out on the cutting edge of those information issues, and as Senator Pressler earlier indicated, clearly on the communication issues. He understood those issues at a depth that few members of Congress understood them at. And I think that he was clearly, and if you want to expand that and talk about some other issues that he was involved in and was really an expert on, arms control, for example.

I remember the debates over the Midgetman versus the MX and the work that he did during those years with Congressman Dicks and others. And he really performed an important leadership role within the Congress on an issue of that magnitude. We all know about his involvement in the environment.

So I look at Vice President Gore, and I think that if you really want to know where he's going to be as president, look where his passion has been, and I think it is those issues that motivate him as he seeks the presidency. And I think if you want to know what he's going to spend his time and energy on as president, I think it will be those issues.

MR. DIONNE: Senator Pressler?

SENATOR PRESSLER: And I would add to that and agree with much of that. Also, his committee assignments in the Senate were Armed Services and Commerce, and those are not traditionally partisan committees like Judiciary, for example. And many of the issues in Commerce are not really Republican-Democrat, you've got people all over the map on transportation deregulation, and like Jimmy Carter led the fight for deregulation of natural gas, which has been very successfully incidentally, but I won't editorialize about that.

But in any event, the committees he was on weren't really the most partisan. And so this criticism that he worked mostly on technical issues, they are mostly technical issues in those committees.

MR. BROOKS: Why don't we go to a question over here.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: The discussion has been very thin on foreign policy, and I wonder if some of our panelists might address that. Is Mr. Gore going to be closer to the romantic school, ala Jimmy Carter and Mr. Clinton, or will he be more a realist? Will we see more "ad hocism" on foreign policy or does he have a clear vision of what U.S. foreign policy in the post-Cold War era ought to be? And if so, what is it?

MS. KAMARCK: I think a good starting point for that would be to have a look at the vice president's speech, opening speech to the Security Council yesterday, where he began a process of a definition of foreign policy that was a nontraditional definition of foreign policy, where he identified disease and a global climate crisis as new areas for international security threats and things that could pose severe security threats. AIDS, in Africa, has killed more people than all of the wars. It's a pretty dramatic statistic when you think about it.

And I think that while he would be very much a realist in that sense, because he is in favor of a strong military and a strong defense, he is not afraid of using American troops when he believes that's necessary, I think there's a different aspect to his understanding of foreign policy, and I think that aspect has to do with understanding foreign policy in terms of the human community, in terms of the emergence of disease, the emergence of global climate threats that are, in fact, every bit as destabilizing and could be every bit as destabilizing as old-fashioned wars and regional conflicts and conflicts between great powers.

I think you will see him craft a foreign policy that is somewhat broader in vision than we traditionally understand it to be.

MR. BROOKS: Could I ask Woody Brosnan and John Harris to comment on more of the old-fashioned sort of foreign policy? First relations between Vice-President Gore and the Pentagon, and second, any internal lobbying he's done on the Kosovo-Bosnia, those sorts of intervention issues. Maybe starting with Woody and then John.

MR. BROSNAN: I'm going to go back a little bit on style and foreign policy, in that it addresses the question of how serious he takes foreign policy. One of my first encounters with Gore to talk about--I think it was the Midget Man debate at the time--came right about the time there was a summit going on. And I came into the office, had he had laid out a series of yellow pages from my legal pad, and he had diagrammed where he thought the summit might go, and if it had this outcome, what might then happen. And I'm not talking about in terms of numbers of missiles or anything like that, but in a policy direction, if this outcome happens, what will the Russians do next, what will do this? So I think that's the kind of exercise he tends to even go through. He tries to think thoroughly, not just about what the position is, but if we do this, what then will happen next?

I think he certainly appeared from all--to be a strong advocate of intervention in Kosovo. He talks in the Earth in the Balance, about--and he really believes that we are put here to be stewards of the earth, and I think he thinks he can be a steward of the earth, in a sense, to both in the environment, and he believes that human rights and democracy are also part of getting the earth in good shape environmentally.

MR. BROOKS: John?

MR. HARRIS: I think one of the aspects of White House-Pentagon relations in the Clinton era is that because of President Clinton's tangled history, he really does approach the Pentagon defensively, recognizing that he's got a public vulnerability. I think even just at the personal level, feeling vulnerable or somewhat defensive in his relations with senior military commanders. As somebody up rather high in the first-term Clinton Defense Department once told me, Clinton acts timid and always approaches his relationships with the Pentagon gingerly. I don't think President Gore would feel any of that kind of defensiveness or deference whatsoever. He's been somebody that's in the military. I don't think he feels defensive about his own reaction, and I don't feel that he lacks confidence in his own judgments.

President Clinton did not come to the White House with a lot of spontaneous opinions or instincts about foreign affairs. President Gore would be the opposite of that. He would come with a lot of individual and independent judgments, so he wouldn't be defensive.

To go back to that earlier question, it's just a hunch, but I suspect that he would fit more in the Wilsonian tradition of a foreign policy based on good intentions and what America can do abroad, rather than a very sort of hard-boiled what is the immediate national interest. And just to play off with Woody said--and actually, it plays off of one of the themes of this whole morning on domestic questions as well. I see President Gore as being somebody who really is a believer in big unifying ideas. If you read Earth in the Balance, he says that environmentalism should be the "new central organizing principle for civilization." That's a direct quote: "the new central organizing principle for civilization." Somebody that could write that sentence in that book is somebody who is not a tinkerer, is somebody who is entirely confident of his judgment and is prepared I think to act on them, and I think that you'd see that kind of spirit animating foreign policy.

MR. DIONNE: Before we turn to Ben Wattenberg, I wanted to ask two very specific questions, first to Senator Pressler and then to Congressman Slattery. During the Gulf War vote Al Gore was agonizing almost till the very end, and he's used the vote where he eventually came down in the campaign to say, "I voted for the Gulf War." I remember trying to interview him the day before the vote, and his office was refusing all interviews because it was sort of Gulf War in the balance, he was weighing these things so carefully.

What's your memory of where Senator Gore ended up on the Gulf War and why?

And if I could just do both questions at once, save time. If Congressman Slattery could take us a bit through the Midget Man discussion, because that was a very big deal in resolving some of the differences that the Reagan Administration had with the Congress.

If you could each deal with those two questions.

SENATOR PRESSLER: Okay. Well, first of all, I was very impressed with the way Al Gore handled the Gulf War. I think he can point to that as a badge of honor almost, even though I'm on the opposite side politically. But it's rare on those kinds of votes that senators on either side of the aisle leave their party. They might make speeches and so forth, but that would have--he would have to hold that vote up as a time when he really studied it through and did what he thought was best for the country.

On foreign policy votes we're supposed to have politics end at the shorelines, but usually they are party votes. So in terms of that, I would tip my hat to him.

MR. DIONNE: Mr. Slattery?

CONGRESSMAN SLATTERY: First of all, as someone who voted on the Gulf War, I can tell you that there were a lot of members of Congress on both sides of the political aisle that went through an awful lot of personal agony before they cast that vote, because there were some very dire predictions about the kind of casualties we would be dealing with, and so I appreciate, frankly, the effort that then-Senator Gore made to really study this issue very carefully, and keep in mind, at that time, there were some very highly respected members of the Senate, and I believe Senator Sam Nunn was one who ended up going the other way and voted against the Persian Gulf War, and I think that someone like Senator Gore was probably looking to someone like Senator Nunn for his thoughts and his reasoning, and I can understand why he was very careful and very analytical in making his decision, and I happen to agree with the final decision that he made, and I think history is on his side there too. But I appreciate that approach. I appreciate that analytical, thoughtful approach, reaching out, trying to find the best information available and then making a decision. If it takes an extra day, then so be it. I'll take that process over an impulsive approach I suppose.

On the Midgetman debate, this was back in the heat of the Cold War, and members of Congress were struggling with the budget dimension of the MX missile and the cost of it, and whether it was going to enhance this nation's security or not, and I thought that then-Congressman Gore and Congressman Dicks and others developed a real thoughtful approach that was going to cost less and arguably enhance the nation's security more, and also be politically feasible.

So I mean I think that then-Congressman Gore deserves a lot of credit for being able to put together, working again on both sides of the political aisle in a highly-charged political environment, in fashioning an alternative that made more sense.

MR. BROOKS: I'm going to go to Ben Wattenberg.

MR. WATTENBERG: It seems to be generally accepted and written about that both the Vice-President and Senator Bradley are running their primary campaigns toward the left, and the reason they are doing that is because that is where they sense the political power of the Democratic Party to be.

I have two questions. One is: do you agree that at least on the domestic side he is indeed running his campaign to the left, and secondly, if he should be elected and then consider running for re-election, wouldn't the same gravitational forces--if it has now been determined by both of the candidates running in a Democratic Party, that the power position, the way you get nominated or renominated is by running to the left, couldn't we expect the sorts of positions that he is now articulating to run throughout his first term as President?

MR. KLAIN: Well, let me start off by disputing the premise, Ben. I do not think the Vice-President is running to the left. I think the Vice-President is running on a very busy ambitious activist agenda that still is rooted in fiscal responsibility and a centrist approach. In fact, if you look at what I think is the number one disagreement between himself and Senator Bradley, it's a disagreement about Senator Bradley's health care plan, which the Vice-President thinks is fiscally irresponsible, risks return to deficit spending, undoes our fiscal discipline, and doesn't set aside funds that are needed for Medicare to preserve the entitlement programs for the baby-boom generation. I think that is a very centrist critique of Senator Bradley's plan.

And in terms of what kind of president he would be or re-election campaign, the thought seems far away and in some ways very painful to think about another campaign, but I think that one of the unique things, one of the great things about this campaign is that both Al Gore and Bill Bradley have laid out a pretty comprehensive vision of what they would do as President, and I think if either one of them wins--and I certainly hope it's the Vice-President--they will be accountable to the American people for that agenda and what kind of work they did on it, how much progress they made, and what it stands for. And that agenda, I think, that the Vice-President's laid out, is both ambitious and sensible, would put this country on a path to do bold things in the next century, but without undoing our fiscal discipline and the strong economic growth we've enjoyed.

MR. BROOKS: Norm.

MR. ORNSTEIN: Let's return to Al Gore as a lawmaker, and put it into a slightly different context. We've now had two previous sessions, and we're well through this one, that focused on two candidates with whom Larry served in the Senate, Bill Bradley and John McCain, and Jim, you served with John McCain in the House--

CONGRESSMAN SLATTERY: Came in together.

MR. ORNSTEIN: Came in together. We have had some very extended discussion of their styles as lawmakers and what that would tell us about how they would serve as President. It was quite interesting. With Bill Bradley we saw first of all a talent for raising some issues to a different level of national discourse, something that not too many people can do. He did it with third-world debt, for example. He did it with tax reform. We saw one instance in which he played a central role in getting a major piece of legislation enacted, tax reform, a handful of issues where he got deeply engaged and more engaged then you would see with almost anybody else, to a level where some of our panelists suggested he was almost like a staffer in dealing with detail, but where he was also willing to try and pull coalitions together, go into the gym, which he hadn't done before, and work with his colleagues.

With John McCain we've seen a number of issues where he's gotten engaged, oftentimes able to work better with Democrats than Republicans, where he's built coalitions on the tobacco bill. He got a near unanimous vote on the Commerce Committee, but then found he couldn't pull them to conclusion in the Congress.

Looking over the course of Al Gore's career in the House and Senate, how would he compare to the others in terms of his strengths and weaknesses in building coalitions and raising issues as he's done with environmental matters, the information super highway, the Midget Man, to a different level, but in actually making pieces of legislation happen, in working with Democrats and Republicans to actually get laws enacted, where is he strong and weak, and how would he compare with the others, and what does that tell us about how he would govern?

CONGRESSMAN SLATTERY: First of all, I think it's important for us to recognize that the skills required to be a good legislator are not necessarily the same skills required to be a good President. And I would point to, for example, President Reagan, as an example of someone who I don't think was ever really accused of getting too enmeshed in the details of legislation, and yet he possessed great communication skills that enabled him to communicate directly with the American people in such a way as the people sort of rose up and expressed that view to members of Congress, and members of Congress ultimately voted in the way that the President wanted them to vote.

And I think that President Clinton has possessed some of the same sort of communication skills with some of the same results, and I think that Vice-President Gore probably possesses a unique balance. I think he's a capable communicator, but in fairness, I don't think he's the communicator that Bill Clinton is, and perhaps not the communicator that President Reagan was. But he also has this very, very good, policy command that will enable him I think to work very effectively with members of Congress. When members of Congress go over to visit a President Gore, they're going to know they're sitting down and talking to someone who may be a very good politician, but also is very good on the policy and very good on the details, and they'll be able to engage this President in thoughtful, constructive discussion and debate, and it will be done with mutual respect, I believe. And I think that will help build a dramatic improvement in congressional relations.

SENATOR PRESSLER: Well, I would certainly concur that in terms of knowing the issues, he will govern knowing the issues. But in almost every instance, based on his Senate experience, whether it was truck deregulation, airline deregulation, telecom deregulation, he would come down very consistently on the side of larger government involvement.

Agricultural policy is something that hasn't been discussed. He just announced a large agricultural subsidy program in Iowa, but in agriculture, there's sort of two schools. There's the grain people and the farm union who want massive government involvement, and they usually get it, and then there are the cattlemen and the Farm Bureau who don't want so much government involvement. But in every instance, Al Gore--he'll study the issue, that's true, he's good at it--but he will come down on the side of more government involvement. And the purpose of this forum is really to try to figure out what kind of a president we will have, and we will have