8/11/00 4:10 p.m.
The Real Shadow Convention
Clinton haunts the Democraats.

Robert A. George is an editorial page writer
for the New York Post------------------------------------RAGGEDmail@aol.com

aybe it's time to ask the question, seriously: Does Bill Clinton really want Al Gore to win the presidency? The conventional wisdom has always been that a Gore victory would give Clinton the "legacy" that he needs to cement his place in history. At the very least, Gore in the White House would be able to sweep under the rug any leftover evidence of various wrongdoing from the past eight years. Bush-Cheney might be able to unearth goodness-knows-what that could result in independent counsels, lawsuits, or private prosecution. Clinton needs Gore to win to avoid that prospect.

However, recent actions seem to undermine the conventional wisdom. Consider Thursday's New York Times article on how much time Bill and Hillary will spend in Los Angeles building up to next week's convention. The Times estimates that the duo may raise as much as $4 million for her campaign and $10 million for his library. Worse, Clinton will be stamping L.A. as "his" town — when the anticipation build-up should be reserved for the incoming titular head of the party, Al Gore. That this is happening is actually a two-pronged assault on Gore. For one thing, the story itself brings to a crashing halt all the "buzz" of the last three days on the Gore-Lieberman ticket. Yes, some of the stories were getting a bit negative, highlighting their differences and so forth. But, that's irrelevant: Bush and Cheney news had been pushed off the front page and Gore, briefly, was driving the news cycle.

BAM! The Clinton fundraising story (it always comes down to that, doesn't it?) immediately halts that momentum. Worse, it sends the signal that — unlike the GOP convention, every jot and tittle of which was signed off on by Bush's people — Clinton still casts the largest shadow at the Democrats' bash. Al is not running the show.

No sooner is the Times story part of Thursday conversation than Clinton appears before 4,500 evangelical ministers to, again, "apologize" for the Lewinsky/impeachment mess. Notably — or perhaps not, at this point — he again focuses on the sex part of the scandal and not the legal, how this has affected him and not the nation: "I'm now in the second year of a process of trying to totally rebuild my life from a terrible mistake I made." The "terrible" mistake was the affair — not the serial lying, not the perjury, not the stringing the nation along for nearly a year and pushing everyday citizens into opposing sides of a cultural referendum on his behavior. Clinton's latest apology simply opens up the old wounds one more time — three days after Joe Lieberman's appearance as the moral Democrat who condemned Clinton's behavior but in the end voted to set him free.

The Shadow has clearly thrown the Democrats into a complete panic. So guilt-ridden by the taint of Clinton sex, they are forced to browbeat California Rep. Loretta Sanchez to pull her fundraiser at the Playboy mansion. Gore's convention organizers threatened to yank her convention speaking role. While the irony of a Democratic congresswoman being "stripped" of a convention role for wanting to have an event at the Playboy club is too delicious for words, let's consider how truly remarkable this is.

Sanchez is not just any congresswoman. Last year, she — along with Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer — was named General Co-Chair for the DNC. Along with national chair Joe Andrew, the trio formed the perfect three-headed beast to lead the Democrats: Andrew happens to be white, Archer black and Sanchez Latino — or is, at least married to one. In fact, it was emphasizing this bit of ethnicity that helped Sanchez defeat "B-1 Bob" Dornan in 1996.

So Gore and the Democrats are threatening to pull one of their key spokespersons to the Latino community, because she is organizing an event at an "inappropriate" venue. And the convention is taking place in heavily Latino Los Angeles in heavily Latino California, a state Gore absolutely has to win to have any chance in November! The latest polls show the race in the Golden State tightening as well. Considering the premium that Democrats place on ethnic pandering (which, admittedly, the GOP is fast trying to equal), this is nothing short of a huge risk Gore and Co. are running. Poor Loretta Sanchez was reduced to muttering on the Today show Friday morning: "It has never been about the Playboy Mansion. It is about putting on a good event and it is about raising money." If that doesn't sound like the official doctrine of the Clinton years, I don't know what does.

The Shadow lingers and threatens to upset what Gore assuredly wanted — a neatly choreographed convention in the manner of the Republicans. Clinton may think that America forgives him. But Gore's selection of Joe Lieberman and his sledgehammer blow on Sanchez suggest that he must have internal polls much like this week's Zogby survey, which found that by a margin of 28.7% to 6.5%, voters are less likely to vote for Gore if Clinton campaigns for him. This includes independents who are 29.6% less to 3.9% more likely.

Yet Clinton can't cede the stage. Forget about Bush and Cheney, Bill Clinton is Al Gore's one inescapable foe. One has to wonder whether it is pathological. In a column this week, Michael Kelly writes of Gore's vice-presidential pick: "The New Democratic Party is not the party of Nader, but the party of the Democratic Leadership Council and its chairman, Joe Lieberman. And this is the only Democratic Party that has proved it can elect a president."

True, but in the vainglorious mind of our current president, he — Bill Clinton — is the only Democrat to have won the White House in sixteen years, the only one to be re-elected in sixty years. Could he be so selfishly motivated that he would prefer the "Democratic Presidential Savior" tag even at the possible cost of his own self-preservation? If the Democratic ticket goes down, Clinton can put the blame on Gore's poor campaigning skills (a somewhat legitimate point) and not the awful drag he himself represents.

His legacy may be tainted, but, hey: At least Bill Clinton proved he could be elected to the White House — twice.