Bush Gore :: essays research papers

 · ASHINGTON -- The storm over his campaign finance practices has thrust Al Gore into what his advisers concede is by far the most perilous moment of his political career, leaving his aides scrambling to contain the damage. The growing nervousness results from the announcement last week that Janet Reno, the attorney general, is reviewing whether the vice president's fund-raising activities may have been improper for such a high-ranking official. The inquiry could lead to the appointment of a special prosecutor. His troubles were only compounded this week by fresh disclosures that Gore may have been more immersed in fund raising than he has acknowledged, as well as the disclosure of memorandums suggesting that Gore could have known and should have known that some of his solicitations from the White House were not permitted on federal property. Mounting a drive to keep the fallout to a minimum, Gore's top aides and closest advisers around the country have begun holding conference calls every morning to plot strategy for reacting to the disclosures and, as one participant put it, "get information from outside the bunker" of the White House. While the 15- to 20-minute calls were described as businesslike, another person who takes part observed that some people on the line are always "jittery and over-reactive." The vice president's aides are so sensitive about the political consequences of the current allegations that they have made special efforts to try to root out anti-Gore leakers to the press in the White House. The controversy has also led to some finger-pointing among Gore's advisers over whether his office had been too slow at first to make public the details of his fund-raising practices and then had gone to the other extreme by releasing too many documents at a briefing last week. "Nothing like this has ever happened to the vice president during his career," said Roy Neel, an adviser to Gore for nearly two decades and his first chief of staff in the White House. "He hasn't had damage control to deal with anything of this order." A handful of recent surveys found that Gore's reputation has been tarnished by the controversy. In a Los Angeles Times poll published Friday, only 34 percent of the American public reported a favorable impression of the vice president, compared with 59 percent for President Clinton. Several of Gore's advisers said that while they had thought they could put the hearings behind them, they now believed that there was a strong possibility that Ms.