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American Morning
Gore May Be Positioning for Presidential Run
Aired July 26, 2002 - 08:14 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: President Bush is anxious to sign the corporate reform bill that Congress passed with lengthening speed yesterday. While the House and Senate answer the call to punish corporate crooks, former Vice President Al Gore was taking his best shot at the president for what he, Gore, called mismanaging the economy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AL GORE, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT: The best thing they could do is to completely scrap their entire economic plan and start over again from scratch and get rid of their entire economic team and start with a brand new one tomorrow that has some common sense to get our country back on track again.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAFFERTY: Al Gore, the guy who finished second.
Joining us now with more on Gore and Congress's corporate crackdown and the fact that they can move with some alacrity down there, CNN senior analyst Jeff Greenfield -- good morning.
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.
You said he finished second and I think that's what's really, partly what's going on. Think about this. If we can have sympathy for politicians as journalists. Here's a guy who wakes up every morning and the first thing, if it were me, that pops into my head is hey, hold it. I got half a million more votes than the other guy and he's president.
CAFFERTY: Right. Yes.
GREENFIELD: And as one of his closest aides told me when I was working on my book, there was like a divine plot almost to keep him from being president, you know? He loses West Virginia. You can't lose West Virginia if you're a Democrat.
But more than that, he was taking a lot of heat for running a populist campaign back then.
CAFFERTY: Right. I remember.
GREENFIELD: People versus the powerful.
CAFFERTY: Sure.
GREENFIELD: Even Joe Lieberman wasn't too keen on that. Now you've got Congress falling all over themselves trying to pass capital punishment for CEOs and what's the line? Well, the rich people will get richer and sticking it to poor people. So in that sense, Al Gore's got to be thinking...
CAFFERTY: I told you so.
GREENFIELD: Yes, but you can't say I told you so in American politics. People don't like it.
CAFFERTY: That's right.
You know, some things maybe are just not meant to be. I mean maybe Al's thinking, you know -- is he going to run again, do you think? I mean...
GREENFIELD: Well, do I know?
CAFFERTY: No, I know you don't know.
GREENFIELD: Al hasn't talked to me...
CAFFERTY: But I mean...
GREENFIELD: He's certainly putting himself in a position to run and he's also got this, I think, dilemma. The last thing in the world he wants is to be seen as another one of the Democratic wannabes. You know, there's a whole bunch of people who obviously want to run.
Next Monday here in New York the Democratic Leadership Council, a very important centrist group, is meeting. Daschle, Tom Daschle will speak, Senator Kerry will speak, Senator Edwards will speak, Joe Lieberman will speak. Not Al Gore.
CAFFERTY: Why isn't he going to be there?
GREENFIELD: Well, I -- well, in part he has a commitment in Tennessee. But in part I think he doesn't want to be seen as part of a pack. But at the same time he knows that there are an awful lot of Democrats who are saying well, we know you got half a million votes more than the other guy, yada yada, Supreme Court, but how could you run no better than a tie with the best economic record that any party ever had to run with?
CAFFERTY: The country was in the garden spot.
GREENFIELD: There must have been something about you they didn't like.
CAFFERTY: Yes.
GREENFIELD: So he's in a -- if he does run he knows they're not going to hand it to him and say oh, you were cheated last time, please, have the nomination, let's skip the primaries.
CAFFERTY: Right.
GREENFIELD: So I think what he wants to do is to still stay apart from the pack but be very clear that they, I was right a couple of years ago and let's turn to me now.
CAFFERTY: Is Gephardt coming to that thing?
GREENFIELD: I don't think so.
CAFFERTY: No?
GREENFIELD: I should know that but I don't.
CAFFERTY: No, I just, I was curious. He's obviously one of the names that gets talked about when you talk about that growing list of Democratic hopefuls or possibles.
GREENFIELD: Yes. And also one of those who is convinced -- I'm sure Gephardt must tell himself if I had run in 2000, I'd have cleaned Bush's clock because I didn't have Clinton hanging over me and I knew how to run a better campaign.
CAFFERTY: You know, some of the representatives and senators may be unable to travel for fear of, you know, injuring these sore arms that they got from patting themselves on the back for getting this piece of legislation passed in what is record time, anything I can remember over the last few years.
GREENFIELD: I actually went back and looked to see under what circumstances the Congress moves this quickly. Sometimes, like in 1933 they passed a bill to help Roosevelt with the banks. Fine.
CAFFERTY: The banks were failing then.
GREENFIELD: And they did it right after the terror attacks. They also did it in 1964 after the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which apparently historians now think never happened, when the North Vietnamese allegedly fired on two patrol boats.
CAFFERTY: Right.
GREENFIELD: That resolution passed unanimously in the House. Only two senators voted against it. And it said the president has, can use all necessary force. That's how Johnson escalated the Vietnam War.
And one more incident. They passed a bill in 1973 in record time to stop the NFL from blocking out football games.
CAFFERTY: Hey.
GREENFIELD: They know what would really cause a revolution in this country.
CAFFERTY: So every 30, 40 years they can do this, right?
GREENFIELD: They can and sometimes it works and sometimes, boy, a lot of those congressmen looking back on the Gulf of Tonkin said if we had realized what was in that thing, we needed to take more time.
CAFFERTY: Oh, yes.
GREENFIELD: Every time they complained Johnson said hey...
CAFFERTY: You guys passed it.
GREENFIELD: ... it's right here on paper. You said I could do whatever I wanted.
CAFFERTY: There you go.
GREENFIELD: So we don't know whether in 20 years we'll look back on this and go hmmm, maybe there's something in that bill we should have looked at.
CAFFERTY: All right, Jeff, good to see you. Thank you.
GREENFIELD: OK.
CAFFERTY: Jeff Greenfield.
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