These examples tell us something about Gore. But they may also tell us something about the art of the campaign. Exaggerations, and sometimes outright fabrications, are a standard fixture of most stump speeches. The line between parody and prevarication, between tall tales and small lies, is often so jagged that even close aides don’t know if the candidate has it right or not.
Those of us who traveled last winter with Bill Bradley heard him tell again and again the story of Joe Pell. Concisely put, Bradley was playing pro ball, and the Knicks had been losing. A letter arrived that read something like: “Bradley, if you ever play that badly again, I’m going to kill your dog. Signed, Joe Pell.” Bradley dutifully wrote back, telling Mr. Pell that no one wanted to win more than he did, they were doing the best they could, and by the way, he didn’t even have a dog. A few weeks later, the story went, a box arrived at Bradley’s home, and his wife, Ernestine, called for him to open it. Inside was a puppy, and a note: “Bradley, don’t get too attached to this dog.”
Aside from the obvious lack of any kind of moral, there was just one problem with this story: it wasn’t even remotely true. As it turns out, there was no Joe Pell and no dog; about the only things real here were that Bradley played for the Knicks (this can be confirmed through old news clippings) and he is married to a woman named Ernestine (I met her). A former campaign aide described the Joe Pell story to me as “an apocryphal joke,” much like Gore’s union story. The difference between Bradley and Gore, the aide said, is that Gore exaggerates his record. There’s something to that. But like Gore, Bradley made his story come to life by inserting into it his real-life wife and his house and his achievements. And he must have sensed that it could get him into trouble, because after reporters asked him about the story once, he never told it again.
By contrast, one of John McCain’s favorite jokes involved former Senator Mo Udall, who was running for president in an earlier age. Udall wanders into a barbershop and says, “Hi, I’m Mo Udall and I’m running for president.” To which a patron replies: “Oh yeah, we were just laughing about that this morning.” It’s hard to know if this ever really happened, but McCain always resisted the temptation to put himself in that barbershop. He was careful to begin each time with: “My friend Mo Udall told a story…”
Ronald Reagan later became known for inventing whole scenarios as president, seemingly confusing his war movies with the real thing. The voting public seemed not to mind. And even the most scrupulous politicians rely on composites, changing timelines and locations to make their favorite lines sound fresh. The Bradley aide reminded me that during his 1984 campaign, John Glenn would tell a story about his own humility. He had been introduced to a crowd as a man of incredibly rare accomplishment. On the way home, he turned to his wife, Annie, and said something like: “You know, when you think about it, there really aren’t a lot of people who’ve achieved as much as I have.” To which Annie replied: “There’s one less than you think.” Glenn would say that the conversation took place “just the other night” or “not long ago.” He was still saying that when I met him 14 years later, on the eve of his return to space.
There is, to be fair, a certain amount of exaggeration that comes from hearing and reading all kinds of personal stories in all kind of cities at all kinds of hours. “A supporter of theirs tells them a story, and the next thing you know that story is coming out of their mouths,” says a veteran consultant. “And you haven’t checked it out.” It is possible that Gore remembered being in Texas after a natural disaster, but forgot that he wasn’t actually with FEMA chief James Lee Witt, as he claimed in a presidential debate. Maybe, in the tsunami-like chaos of the campaign, Gore forgot the real number of hours that his new friend in Iowa spent gathering cans. Either way, the media is now like a permanent polygraph strapped to Gore’s arm. The New York Times recently caught him fudging the details of a practical joke played on him some 30 years ago. We can only imagine what would have happened if he were out there talking about Joe Pell.
