Sunday Morning News

Election 2000: Gore and Bush Keep Quiet About Court Proceedings

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Governor Bush remained on his ranch in Crawford, Texas yesterday, but he had some company.

CNN's Candy Crowley reports.

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CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SR. POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): No chad here. Just Dennis and George and Trent and Dick. The Bush transition in exile let the cameras roll again Saturday, recording the opening of a session at the Bush ranch about next year's legislative agenda.

REP. DENNIS HASTERT (R-IL), HOUSE SPEAKER: It's time to start the plan to get those things done. You just don't do them at a turn of a nickel or just in a second's knee jerk. It takes some time. It takes some planning.

CROWLEY: Casual Saturday dress, but beyond that George Bush and Dick Cheney sitting around a table with Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and House Speaker Dennis Hastert looks a lot like a Republican leadership meeting in the Oval Office, which is part of the point.

The other part is the need to begin to put people and priorities in place.

GOVERNOR GEORGE W. BUSH (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I do want to continue to talk about tax relief particularly given the fact that there's some warning signs on the horizon about our economy. And I believe the agenda that we'll be bringing to the Congress is one that will help the economic growth of the country.

CROWLEY: Members of Congress didn't get much face time in the Bush campaign. It was counter to the Texas governor's strategy of running as an outsider against the status quo.

But even if the election isn't over, the campaign sort of is.

BUSH: Well, I'm soon to be the insider. I'm soon to be the president.

CROWLEY: But the ferocity of the courtroom battle in Tallahassee is the undertow that pulls at the certainty exuded by the Bush camp. Sometimes you feel it, as when George Bush described a Friday phone call to Louisiana Democrat Senator John Breaux.

BUSH: I knew it might put him in an awkward position that we had a discussion before the -- before finality has, you know, finally happened in this presidential race.

CROWLEY: Bush described the conversation as a comfortable discussion about the general state of things.

(on camera): Without cable television at his ranch in Crawford, Bush could not watch the proceedings in Leon County. But to no one's surprise, his team pronounced it a good day and said it seemed to them that Gore lawyers had spent too much time in front of television cameras and not enough time preparing for court.

Candy Crowley, CNN, Austin.

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JONATHAN KARL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Vice President Gore is keeping mum while the courts determine his fate, venturing into public only long enough to take a brief stroll down Wisconsin Avenue in Washington with his wife, Tipper, and his daughter, Kristen.

After grabbing a cup of coffee at Starbuck's, Gore ventured ever so briefly his only public comment of the day. It came in response to a question about how his presidential transition is coming along.

AL GORE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're making quiet progress.

KARL: But transition talk aside, Gore's aides are nervously watching developments in Florida, worried that time is running out as his court case drags on.

DAVID BOIES, GORE CAMPAIGN ATTORNEY: Every hour makes a difference, every day makes a difference. But having said that, I think we are on track.

KARL: Gore's top aides privately concede that the vice president, who is on somewhat of a legal losing streak, desperately needs a legal victory soon. They are looking for a court order to immediately start the counting of those 14,000 disputed ballots.

BOIES: If you manually look at these punch card ballots, you will discover hundreds and hundreds of votes where the intent of the voter is clear that have not been counted.

KARL: The Gore team hopes Judge Sander Sauls will rule on their recount request Sunday. If he rules against them, they are prepared to appeal. But they are also keenly aware that by then, it may be too late to get the counting done on time.

(on camera): There's a reason for Gore's low profile as he awaits action by the Florida court and by the U.S. Supreme Court. As one top aide said, "Court decisions over the next 24 to 48 hours will tell the tale. Anything else right now is just a sideshow."

Jonathan Karl, CNN, Washington.

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PHILLIPS: Sideshow or not, the vice president finds himself in a legal pickle.

And correspondent Bill Turque writes for "Newsweek" magazine. He's also the author of "Inventing Al Gore." He's in our Washington studio this morning.

Hi, Bill. Good to see you.

BILL TURQUE, "NEWSWEEK": Good morning, Kyra. How are you?

PHILLIPS: Very good. I had a chance to read your article "What Makes Al Tick?" A couple thoughts come to mind, but why don't we start out sort of generally and from your experience as a journalist and spending time with Al Gore, what's going on inside his head right now?

TURQUE: Well, he is utterly, utterly immersed and engaged in the details of his legal battle. He believes, as his aides have said repeatedly, that he won the state of Florida.

But I think it's more than a matter than his believing that the numbers will bear him out. I think there's a place in Al Gore that believes that he was somehow destined to be president. A friend of his told me recently that he "believes he is on history's agenda," is the way he put it. So he -- he's fighting with every fiber of his being to try to prevail here.

PHILLIPS: Well, it seems like fighting with every fiber of his being is a common fight. I was looking at a quote here that kind of grabbed me in your article. You - his Harvard roommate, John Tyson (ph), said he remembers the out of the blue challenges to anything from pushups to beer chugging. He was always "I bet I can beat you at the last thing you did."

What do you make of that?

TURQUE: He has a fiercely competitive sense about him and he doesn't like to lose. Losing is not an option in his world. And he will fight, I think, until his last breath here -- last legal and political breath. He doesn't like to lose.

PHILLIPS: Do you think this came from his father being a Senator and, really, Al Gore knowing but nothing but politics his whole life?

TURQUE: I think part of it came from the great expectations his parents had for him.

But I think part of it is just kind of a mystery. It is simply who he is and he's someone who's always been a compulsively competitive guy. If you remember his first presidential campaign in 1988, he also stayed at the table until the very bitter end, really weeks beyond when most political pros said his campaign was dead.

PHILLIPS: Does he have a fear at all that he may be holding on too long?

TURQUE: I think, honestly, he's not worried about that right now. He's the kind of guy that really focuses on the task in front of him. And I think he's sort of compartmentalized off his concerns about 2004 right now. He really wants to try to make this work for him. And then he'll worry about 2004.

PHILLIPS: Does he get angry?

TURQUE: Sure he does. He gets frustrated, I think, at the Republicans' ability to run out the clock and delay things in court. He's frustrated about the fact that he didn't win the state of Tennessee, his home state -- another 80,000 votes. And he wouldn't be in this predicament right now, so...

PHILLIPS: Why do you think that happened, Bill?

TURQUE: Why do I think that happened?

PHILLIPS: Mm hm.

TURQUE: Well, if you talk to people down there, they'll tell you that the Gore campaign basically took the state for granted until it was too late. The Republicans were on television, they were doing heavy direct mail for months in Tennessee. And I think there was a little bit of complacency on the part of the Gore forces down there.

PHILLIPS: If he does not win when this is all over, what are his options? What would he want to do? What could he do?

TURQUE: He has a lot of options. He has a lot of passions.

He is obviously very interested in the environment. Wrote a very provocative book about the environment years ago. I would expect him to pursue something like that. Perhaps write a book about climate change, global warming, or work to roll back the long-term effects of global warming.

He could teach. There's a lot of things open to him. People seem to regard him as someone, well, if he's not president, somehow he'll feel his life is over. But I think that there would be quite a full life for him after politics.

PHILLIPS: Has he ever said to you personally, "You know, I could do this." Or, "I would enjoy doing this." Or is this pretty much speculation?

TURQUE: He's never said that to me. And I think that that, again, as with his chances of coming back in 2004, I think he's really deferred that in a serious way in his own mind until he plays out his string here.

PHILLIPS: Bill Turque, your article comes out this week. I think in airports right now. Correct?

TURQUE: Hopefully.

PHILLIPS: OK. Good. Thanks for being with us this morning. We appreciate it.

TURQUE: Thank you, Kyra.

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