ALTER: What will your first 100 days look like? What are your priorities? GORE: I think the 100-day milestone is itself a trap. The truth is, a lot of the challenges that we face today require stamina and persistence and steadiness of purpose and resolve.
First I will continue the prosperity and progress by balancing the budget and investing in people and opening markets and concentrating on job training and education… I will spend most of my time focused on getting a fair shake for people who don’t have any other chance besides the person sitting in the Oval Office.
I will fight for an increase in the minimum wage, for prescription-drug benefits for seniors, for a patients’ bill of rights, for health care for all the children and step-by-step progress toward universal health insurance. More community police on the streets, a crime victims’ bill of rights and a constitutional amendment to make sure that victims and not just criminals have guaranteed rights. I will fight for the next stage of welfare reform to make fathers accountable. And I will fight to create more good new jobs.
The Kyoto Treaty [mandating emissions reductions to ease global warming] is dead in the Senate. Why would you be more successful than President Clinton has been in persuading the Senate to move on that? You weren’t known as a coalition builder in Congress. I disagree with that. One of the achievements that gives me the most personal satisfaction in Congress is the work I did on arms control. And during that time a Republican congressman from Washington, Joel Pritchard, now deceased, came and asked if I’d like to have his help. And we were able to have a fairly significant impact on both the modernization policy of the U.S. and the shape of the arms-control proposals that were offered to the Soviet Union. I cite that as one prominent example, but there are many examples where I have built coalitions and created bipartisan majorities for legislation.
Do you think your sense of politics is as strong as President Clinton’s is? Well, I’m not sure anybody’s sense of politics is as finely honed as President Clinton’s is. I think that my knowledge of the House and Senate is better than you would find in most people who were elected president. I’ve served eight years in both chambers.
Your programs are going to be very different with the Republican Congress than a Democratic Congress. Oh, yes, I want a Democratic Congress, but I know how to work well with Republicans. And I think that one of the most important duties of the next president is to try to drain out of our system some of the excessive partisan rancor that’s built up.
On campaign finance… It will be the first bill that I send to the Congress… I will not take no for an answer.
Does that require a Democratic Congress, or could it be done with a Republican one? It can be done more easily with a Democratic Congress.
