Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [413]
There was also the Hillary factor. The First Lady, from the start of this administration, had been viewed as a rival of the vice president’s. Now she had signaled her interest in running for a U.S. Senate seat in New York, seeking to replace Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan when he retired in 2000. Hillary was suddenly a potential competitor of Gore’s when it came to vying for campaign dollars. If there was ever a time when Gore would benefit from throwing both Clintons to the circling wolves, this was his moment.
Yet Gore walked away from all such temptations, doing what his oath as vice president required him to do.
“Al’s intense sense of duty was a dominant factor,” said Charles Burson. “Also, if he threw Clinton overboard [at that moment], it would have busted up the Democratic party.” Gore’s brother-in-law Frank Hunger, a Justice Department lawyer and one of the few people in whom the famously introspective vice president confided, confirmed that allowing Clinton to “go down” was not an option for Gore. “He wouldn’t have done that,” said Hunger. “It’s not in his character.”
President Clinton himself would later say that Al Gore’s support, at a time when most politicians in Gore’s shoes would have been tempted to jump ship, was essential to Clinton’s political survival. The president understood that this was not a walk in the park for his vice president. “Well, I think he was angry,” Clinton would say of his two-time running mate. “He should have been angry. Everybody should have been mad at me.” As Bill Clinton gave a quick embrace to his vice president and begged the American public to help them “rise above the rancor, to overcome the pain and division,” he understood that he had hurt Gore deeply. “So it was difficult for him,” Clinton said.
“And he had the same reaction a lot of my Cabinet members did. You know, ‘We don’t want to see the guy kicked out of office. We’re going to support him. We know he’s been through a lot of terrible things these last six years for the way they [Starr’s office and Republican enemies] treated him. But he still shouldn’t have made this mistake.’”
In private, staffers for Clinton and Gore were wondering whether to begin preparing “Plan B” to move Al Gore into the Oval Office, in the event Clinton was forced out. They also agonized over whether to discuss this plan with the president. Both staffs knew that merely raising this idea was like playing with fire. For one, it would cause Clinton to go ballistic. Second, even the slightest whiff of succession planning, if it trickled into the media, could gain traction and propel Clinton out of office. Gore himself made clear through his disciplined silence that there would be no discussions concerning succession. His staff was not permitted to say or do anything that might cause the teetering Clinton administration ship of state to capsize itself.
As he stepped down from the microphone and retreated to his home in the old Naval Observatory, having given aid and comfort to a president who had just been impeached by the House of Representatives, Al Gore glanced over his shoulder out the car’s rear window, watching the White House vanish behind him. He recognized that this day would most likely mean “nothing but trouble” for him, in terms of furthering his own aspirations to inhabit that magnificent white mansion.
A SECOND act of courage that largely went unnoticed in the public’s eye was former President Gerald Ford’s effort to promote a tough censure resolution in order to save the country from a bruising impeachment trial.
Ford, who had served as Republican House minority leader