E-Mail This Article to a Friend Gored The face of the presidential race, Nader’s hubris, and congressional corruption

AL GORE’S ENDORSEMENT of Howard Dean says as much about the former vice-president as it does about the Vermont governor who hopes to win the Democratic nomination to challenge President George Bush.

This is the born-again Gore, not the stiff and cautious candidate who watched the US Supreme Court steal his popular-vote victory over Bush and hand it to the Republicans. The Gore who endorsed Dean is the same man that the Democratic candidates considered a has-been, someone to be given polite consideration but a wide berth. Dean thought otherwise. For more than a year behind the scenes he courted Gore and his wife, Tipper, asking advice on issues ranging from foreign policy to the environment and mental-health policy. And Gore himself, through his growing involvement with MoveOn.org, has sensed that the political landscape is shifting in ways that party regulars don’t fully appreciate. Once again Dean outfoxed and outflanked his rivals.

Dean’s accomplishments to date are impressive. His volunteers are among the most passionate. His use of the Internet sets the gold standard by which other campaigns measure themselves. He has raised more money than the other Democratic candidates. And — even before Gore’s political embrace — he had won the sprint for endorsements by landing vigorous support from organized labor. Now comes the ultimate test: winning votes — first in Iowa and New Hampshire and then in the South.

But for all Dean’s strategic and tactical acumen, for all the courage he evinced by giving voice to what so many in political life may have thought but were too timid to say, there remains the question of his temperament. In Tuesday’s debate at the University of New Hampshire, front-runner Dean was in control, but beneath the surface it was impossible to ignore the sense that he could pop off, erupt, or even explode. In all honesty, that sense is hard to quantify. But the impression that he has a wellspring of anger lurking below the surface is hard to ignore. Yes, there is plenty to be angry about at this time and in this place: Iraq, the economy, and the corroded state of our civil liberties, to name just three. But Dean’s discontent seems personal and private, not political and public. His core supporters may have learned to live with this. But the rest of the electorate hasn’t.

The bizarre flap over how or whether his Vermont state papers should be sealed and the inept way his campaign dealt with his flying on a separate plane from the press corps make more than a few people who follow politics uneasy. At best, they may be missteps. At worst, they suggest a control freak like Jimmy Carter.

To our mind, this should be a race between four candidates: Dean, John Kerry, Dick Gephardt, and Wesley Clark.

Joseph Lieberman, who’s too liberal for Republicans and too conservative for most Democrats, and John Edwards, who might be as calculating as Bill Clinton but is not nearly as charismatic, may still have spark left in their campaigns. But they are not right for the party or the nation.

Al Sharpton may be witty and provocative, Carol Moseley Braun may be decent, and Dennis Kucinich may be admirably radical, but none of them has a chance of winning — nor, frankly, what it takes to be president. With six weeks to go before the voting starts, they should withdraw from the race, secure in the knowledge that they fought the good fight. Face the facts: these are vanity campaigns, not as potentially virulent as Ralph Nader’s, but still sideshows.

As for the other candidates:

• Kerry, an admirable and able man, has been a disappointment on the campaign trail. But he’s showing renewed fire, which may overpower his tendency to appear aloof. Throughout his political life he has been a late closer, someone capable of pouring it on in the end. The time to do so is now.

• Gephardt is a party regular, a traditionalist, and that can be both a plus and a minus in the insurgency-prone Democratic Party. But his appeal to unionists and other lunch-bucket voters in swing border states like West Virginia and Tennessee could pay off in the final election.

• Clark, late off the starting line, is gaining traction. In the recent debate, he did well on foreign affairs but was weak on domestic issues. His performance in New Hampshire will be telling.

As the votes in Iowa and New Hampshire draw near, the question will be less who would make the best president or who would best challenge George W. Bush. The question will be, who can win the nomination? Neither the party, the remaining candidates, nor especially Democratic voters should allow Al Gore’s endorsement of Dean to short-circuit the rest of the process. Al Gore has had his say. Now it’s time for the rest of the voters to weigh in.

WHAT THE HELL is Ralph Nader thinking? He’s not satisfied with the role he played in 2000 in making George W. Bush president? He wants to risk doing it again in 2004? It’s annoying beyond belief even to have to think about Nader in the context of another presidential run after what happened in 2000, but the threat is real, and it must be dealt with.

Some of the progressives who supported Nader in 2000 believed that his candidacy — regardless of what it wrought — would usher in a new era of progressive activism. If Bush won, the reasoning went, it would force Democrats to move to the left. Well, three tax cuts, two Patriot Acts, one war, and a Medicare-reform bill later, we’re still waiting for that to happen.

Many of the progressives who supported Nader in 2000 claimed that there were no core differences between Bush and Gore. Is there anyone out there who still believes that? How many think that a President Gore would have diverted resources from the war against Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden for a pre-emptive strike against Saddam Hussein?

There’s no question that Gore’s weak campaign and his failure even to win his home state of Tennessee, which led to a dramatically tight race, set the stage for the Supreme Court’s decision to award Bush the presidency. But no one can deny that the number of voters who went for Nader in 2000 — 97,488 in Florida alone — played a contributing role. Exit polls showed that many of those who voted for Nader would have sat out the election if Nader hadn’t been running. But not all of them. If just 538 of those Floridians who voted for Nader in 2000 had selected Gore instead, Bush would not be president today. To deny this is to deny reality.

If Nader runs again in 2004, it would be an act of supreme arrogance. If progressives support him, it would be an act of supreme self-sabotage.

WATCH POLITICS long enough, and you develop an armor of cynicism that makes it easy to shrug off even the most baldly political moves. But news of GOP-leadership and pharmaceutical-industry efforts to bribe Republican Michigan congressman Nick Smith into voting in favor of the Medicare-overhaul bill should surprise even the most cynical of observers.

The day after Congress passed a sweeping Medicare bill that will add some prescription-drug coverage for seniors, Smith revealed in a column on his Congressional Web site (www.house.gov/nicksmith) that "bribes and special deals were offered [by House leaders] to convince members to vote yes." Chicago Sun-Times columnist Robert Novak reported November 27 that Smith, who is retiring after this term ends, was told that his son Brad, who is vying with four other Republicans for his seat, would receive $100,000 in campaign funds if Smith voted in favor of the bill. (Novak also reported that "major contributors" warned Republican South Carolina representative Jim DeMint that funding for his re-election effort would be cut off, and that Republican Missouri congressman Todd Akin was threatened with a primary challenge.) Slate columnist Timothy Noah reported Monday that the money for Smith’s son was to come from pharmaceutical companies who will benefit from the Medicare bill. Smith refused to be swayed. After his vote against the bill, Republican House members told Smith that they would work against his son’s efforts to win a seat in Congress.

There is no question that a bribe was offered. What remains a question is who, specifically, made the offer of the campaign funds for Smith’s son. Was it House Speaker Dennis Hastert? Was it Health and Human Services secretary Tommy Thompson? Both men were seen lobbying Smith intensely during the early-morning hours before the vote was cast. Was it someone else in the GOP House leadership?

Smith isn’t saying who offered the money. In fact, when his revelations of the illegal strong-arm tactics started getting a lot of attention, he tried to back away from the allegations. In a statement, Smith asserted: "I want to make clear that no member of Congress made an offer of financial assistance for my son’s campaign in exchange for my vote on the Medicare bill." But his Web-site column and other comments on the record make it clear that the specific sum of $100,000 was offered to Smith for his son. That’s a bribe. And it’s illegal.

To date, no investigation has been launched into Smith’s original claims of bribery. The chairman of the House ethics committee has merely said that it would be "appropriate" to investigate Smith’s claims. No kidding. Not only should the ethics committee investigate, but the Justice Department should as well.

This sickening episode taken alone is shocking enough. But it fits within the Bush administration’s pattern of doing whatever it takes to get what it wants, such as lying to Congress and the public about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in order to build support for a pre-emptive war or revealing the identity of a CIA operative whose husband blew the whistle on one of the president’s lies about Iraq (see "Why Bush Is Impeachable," Editorial, July 18). One of the pleas Speaker Hastert made to Medicare-bill opponents like Smith, DeMint, and Akin (all of whom voted against the bill) was that passage of the bill was extremely important to the president. So important, apparently, that it didn’t matter if the law was broken to achieve that goal.

It’s yet another reason to work to defeat Bush in the upcoming election. And another reason, for that matter, not to tolerate a run from Nader — a run that could give the presidency back to Bush in 2004.

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