What They Think Of Each Other

By NANCY GIBBS

Think of all they would have to talk about, if Al Gore and George W. Bush could go out for a burger to savor their victories this week and resist the temptation to rip each other's throat out. Who would have thought last summer that Bush would have the near death experience, or that Gore, in the course of flattening Bill Bradley, would manage to climb to a dead heat with Bush after lagging 17 points behind in January--and have even more money left over? After their long distraction, the two presumptive nominees finally get to concentrate on one another, and they are losing no time trying to define each other. But in the course of doing so, they will be defining themselves as well.

Bush, says an aide, thinks Gore is "a phony and a cutthroat" and cannot wait to take him on. While he doesn't quite know what to make of the Vice President, people close to him say, he has a gut dislike for him. Already you can hear it when he talks about Gore's "slash-and-burn politics": "Mr. Gore, I'm not going to let you get away with it," he said last week. "We're not going to be fooled by somebody who says one thing and absolutely does something else." It is as though Gore has become a stalking-horse for all those elitist liberals, the pantywaists and special pleaders who whine about rights and fairness from the comfort of their ivory towers and whom Bush has reviled since his days at Yale. And Bush has no time for liberal guilt, doesn't believe he should feel guilty at all for the advantages life has bestowed on him; when he says he inherited "half my father's friends and all his enemies," he signals that he views his extraordinary privilege as more burden than benefit.

You would think that within Camp Gore there would be an equally fired-up cohort appalled that the Vice President, so experienced and knowledgeable on the most arcane policy scraps, should be challenged by some pampered lightweight who thinks five years as Governor of a state with weak executive power qualifies him to be President. But you would be wrong. This is not the way Gore thinks, which tells you as much about how he approaches problems as Bush's visceral antipathy for Gore does about him.

Gore views Bush, like Bill Bradley before him, as simply another "obstacle to be overcome," as an adviser put it, on Gore's way to his appointment with destiny. This view is shared by the people around him, who are generally hard-edged campaign professionals. It is not an epic ideological battle; even the true lefties talk about Bush's "extremism" not as a threat to the social fabric but as a liability they intend to exploit. They probe him clinically, looking for weaknesses, soft spots. This isn't personal; it's just the way politics works.

Gore is well known for his appetite for cold-blooded analysis, whether of an opponent or a proposal. "He has a penchant for issues that are complex and intellectual, as opposed to emotional and ideological," explains a former aide. "With Gore, the question isn't, What do I believe? It's, What do I know?" Although much has been made of Bush's crash course in policy early last year, when the best minds in the party came down to Austin, Texas, to help school him on everything from China policy to the complexities of the earned-income tax credit, Gore too has a history of arranging tutorials to help him hone his views: with Leon Fuerth on arms control, Reed Hundt on the new economy, the late Harvard professor Roger Revelle on climate change.

This process applies even to what many would consider purely moral issues. When Bush needed to ground his soul, he walked on the beach with Billy Graham; when Gore felt he had lost his way after Vietnam, he enrolled in divinity school, looking for "a systematic exploration of structures of right and wrong." He never finished, and when he left, his father asked him, "Did you find the answers you were looking for?" Gore Jr. answered, "I've learned to ask more intelligent questions."

Most politicians, including Bush, use the words right and wrong to talk about gut convictions, the values they live by. When Gore seizes upon an answer, it is because he is convinced that he has got hold of the truth--the demonstrable and provable and complicated truth. Instinct and, even worse, impulse have almost no room in his world. That doesn't mean Gore has no principles, only that he won't get into a fight until he thinks he can support those principles with every conceivable footnote. Some of his most conspicuous positions--pushing the Kyoto treaty on global warming, despite near unanimous Senate opposition, or calling for intervention in Bosnia long before it was popular, or expressing the conviction that gays should be allowed to serve openly in the military--can be perceived as reflections of his value system, but in each case he also has the filing cabinet to prove it. You don't just have to take him at his word.

If Gore's confidence is born of his hard work, Bush's is born of his instinctual style. He is proudly allergic to endless briefing books and the big fat texts Gore eats for lunch. What is often viewed as a Bush weakness--his heavy reliance on staff--he considers a strength. Bush prides himself on being comfortable around smart people who will tell him the unvarnished truth, on seeing through spin and personal agendas, on spotting the weakness in an argument. He prefers talking to reading, working through an issue verbally, Socratically. "I like discussions as an integral part of the decision-making process, because I believe I'm adept at reading people," he told TIME. "I get a feel for 'em."

If Bill Clinton wants everyone in the room to like him, and Al Gore wants everyone to think he's right, George Bush wants everyone to know who's boss. He mocks advisers who try to impress him with arcana, insisting that they "speak English," and he frequently cuts people off in midsentence, keeping control of the conversation. He earns the loyalty of his staff by giving them broad authority, but he doesn't hesitate to remind even his closest advisers that he's the big dog, something he usually does with a sarcastic remark. While Gore may view few of the people close to him as his true equals, he assumes everyone understands this; Bush rarely misses the chance to bring it up.

Voters skeptical about Bush often mention his cockiness--he called himself "President" at one early campaign stop--or a sense that he not only isn't ready to be President but doesn't even know he's not ready. Bush, if administered truth serum, would probably admit that he is not the most experienced or even qualified guy for the job, at least on paper. In an interview this week, he said his biggest hurdle in the next eight months was "convincing the American people that I've got the right judgment to be President, convincing the American people that I'm a sound decision maker." And yet he is just as confident that he is right for the presidency--that he is someone who possesses the mystical capacity to set a clear agenda and persuade others to follow it. It is in this respect that Bush most sees himself to be like Ronald Reagan: an optimist with a simple set of goals and the charm to sell it.

That is one reason the primary fight turned out to be so costly--and not just because it cost him most of that $70 million he had noisily raised. It's hard to run as a merry Reaganaut when you and your surrogates have barbecued John McCain, or talked about uniting people and then courted those who'd rather not. Both men emerge with plenty of scars--but since Gore is trying to sell himself as a fighter, the scars are more natural accessories in his wardrobe.

Already last week Bush was trying to carve up Gore's character, charging on Friday that he had misled federal investigators into the White House fund-raising practices of 1996. Bush's advisers believe that going on the offensive against Gore will fix that stature gap, the sense, even among a sizable minority of Republicans, that Bush simply doesn't have the know-how to be President. "The best way to demonstrate that he is the right guy for the party is to get in a fight with Gore," says a top Bush adviser. "That way you become the standard bearer. Fighting the enemy is the classic way you fix that in a hurry." It's also the classic way to get killed.

--Reported by James Carney and Karen Tumulty/Washington

With reporting by James Carney and Karen Tumulty/Washington