Friends say Gore was flattered at being taken so seriously by the political press. She made the two leading newsmagazines plus the front pages of The Washington Post and The New York Times before bowing out of the race. Not bad for an unambitious housewife, which is how Tipper Gore has been portrayed for much of her life.
When Al Gore lost the presidency in 2000, Tipper was said to be relieved at having her husband’s political career cut short. “That’s B.S.,” says a friend. “She loves it. She was 17 years old when he told her he would be president someday. She would walk through fire for Al Gore, and over the years she’s gotten to like the pomp and circumstance.”
What Tipper dislikes is what this friend calls “the grind,” the endless schlepping to hokey events that are part of any campaign. She liked riding on Air Force Two and having the Secret Service around, but smiling through a day of barbecues and fish fries and hog calls got harder each time around. Tipper was not as much of an active partner in the 2000 campaign as Gore’s advisers, and perhaps Gore himself, might have wished. You can still pick up the whispers that maybe if she had spent more time in Tennessee, the outcome would have been different.
For women politicians, having family members join them on the campaign trail is a trickier situation. Bob Dole wasn’t much help when Elizabeth Dole ran for president, and he’s promising to keep his distance from her North Carolina Senate race. Massachusetts Acting Governor Jane Swift announced this week she is dropping out of the governor’s race because it’s too hard to wage a competitive campaign, run a state, and be a good mother to her three young daughters. It was a wise decision. But if poll numbers showing her 60 points behind Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, were reversed, and she were ahead or close to even, she probably would have stayed in the race. Citing family obligations is sometimes a handy way to save face.
The loss of Gore’s home state sealed his 2000 defeat more than the disputed count in Florida. Tennessee Democrats eager for somebody (anybody!) with name recognition who could raise money in the increasingly Republican state approached Tipper expecting to be rebuffed. They were pleasantly surprised when she wanted to know more about how her candidacy might play out, and where it would fit in the larger scheme of her husband’s plans. Tipper consulted with Hillary Clinton, but that was pro forma. The relationship between the Gores and the Clintons remains strained, and Tipper is not looking to follow in Hillary’s footsteps.
Hillary’s Senate seat is about Hillary, not Bill. Tipper’s Senate race, if it were to happen, is about Al, not Tipper. An extremely small circle of trusted advisers did the war-gaming with no input from the Washington consultants who ran the 2000 campaign. (Gore blames them for his loss; they in turn blame him. Truth is, there’s enough blame to go around.) This band of confidantes concluded that a Tipper campaign would be seen as opportunistic, win or lose. Hours later, Tipper announced she would not be running.
In that brief window while the campaign trail beckoned, Al Gore shaved his beard in what a spokesman said was a gesture of support for his wife should she need a presentable husband at her side. Gore is too self-involved and too calculating to let this moment go by without using it to his political advantage. He needed a reason to shave the beard, and he wasn’t about to yield to the widespread media ridiculing of his hirsute look. So this was his coming out, not hers.
Tipper remains a prop in her husband’s political life, and an important one. The only time Gore polled ahead of George W. Bush during the campaign was in the immediate aftermath of the lengthy convention kiss he planted on his wife’s lips while millions of voters watched.
One potential presidential candidate promises to rewrite the rule book on family campaigning. “I’m not dragging them on the trail,” says Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who is traveling to key primary states and sizing up his prospects for 2004. His wife is a practicing physician who does not plan to take time off to join him on the hustings. In Vermont, where voters elect a governor every two years, Judith Steinberg (yes, she kept her own name) attends her husband’s inauguration and is with him on election night every other year. But that’s it. When the couple’s two children were younger (they’re now teenagers), Dean took them to a lot of parades. “But that was because we had agreed to split child-care duties,” he explains.
Dean has served five terms, and is leaving office at the end of this year–presumably to devote himself full-time to his long-shot presidential candidacy. He has an edginess that is reminiscent of John McCain in the sense that he prides himself on speaking his mind and is admirably blunt in a political world too often reduced to sound-bite pabulum. Until he went into politics, he was a practicing physician like his wife. They met in medical school. If Dean succeeds in his improbable journey, he expects his wife will practice medicine in Washington. “It makes our marriage work,” he says. “She doesn’t get dragged along in my wake.”
