The Full Gore

AL Gore’s late-March speech unveiling a new plan for campaign-finance reform was classic Gore. There was the (slightly unhinged) personal element, as the vice president reached back to his father’s 1970 defeat in Tennessee, allegedly at the hands of special interests, as the source of his own lifelong commitment to campaign-finance reform. There was the self-justification. According to Gore, in 1996 “Democrats, along with Republicans, engaged in fund-raising that pushed the system to the breaking point,” and “I’ve got the scars to prove it.” The scars? How about the stains? And there was utopian aspiration (“Our ultimate goal must be to eliminate [special-interest money] altogether”) combined with an obvious, ham-handed political ambition (to assume the mantle of the mighty McCain).

So far, Gore’s plan has not attracted much attention, but the proposal deserves a lot more of it—and the Bush campaign should provide it. The plan represents the first big-government excess from national Democrats since Hillary Clinton’s doomed health-care plan of 1993-94. What Hillary wanted to do to health care, Gore wants to do to the election system: socialize it. This is a “risky” (to use a favorite Gore word) departure from the successful Dick Morris strategy of eschewing proposals that smack of the old liberalism in favor of modest increases in government and small, symbolic gestures aimed at the middle class.

About the Author

Rich Lowry

Rich Lowry is the editor in chief of National Review.

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AL Gore’s late-March speech unveiling a new plan for campaign-finance reform was classic Gore. There was the (slightly unhinged) personal element, as the vice president reached back to his father’s 1970 defeat in Tennessee, allegedly at the hands of special interests, as the source of his own lifelong commitment to campaign-finance reform. There was the self-justification. According to Gore, in 1996 “Democrats, along with Republicans, engaged in fund-raising that pushed the system to the breaking point,” and “I’ve got the scars to prove it.” The scars? How about the stains? And there was utopian aspiration (“Our ultimate goal must be to eliminate [special-interest money] altogether”) combined with an obvious, ham-handed political ambition (to assume the mantle of the mighty McCain).

So far, Gore’s plan has not attracted much attention, but the proposal deserves a lot more of it—and the Bush campaign should provide it. The plan represents the first big-government excess from national Democrats since Hillary Clinton’s doomed health-care plan of 1993-94. What Hillary wanted to do to health care, Gore wants to do to the election system: socialize it. This is a “risky” (to use a favorite Gore word) departure from the successful Dick Morris strategy of eschewing proposals that smack of the old liberalism in favor of modest increases in government and small, symbolic gestures aimed at the middle class.