Politics

By Declan McCullagh and Karen Tumulty/Washington

It's still the economy, stupid. Now that things are going well, AL GORE is determined to make sure he gets some of the credit--whether the opportunity arises in announcing seemingly every favorable economic statistic that comes out or in his speeches, starting with one this week at the Detroit Economic Club. But Gore may not always want to be inseparable from the economy. If the Millennium Bug sparks a recession, as various economists predict, Republicans aim to remind voters that the high-tech Veep who popularized the term "information superhighway"will have had eight years in which to tackle the problem. "The Year 2000 problem and the Year 2000 campaign are going to be the same thing," says Jim Lucier of Americans for Tax Reform, a group that has close ties to the G.O.P. The Republican National Committee appears to be intrigued at the prospect. Ed Yourdon, an expert on the Millennium Bug, has been invited to speak at a strategy-planning session.

--By Declan McCullagh and Karen Tumulty/Washington