March 31, 1999
Web posted at: 6:12 p.m. EST (2312 GMT)

WASHINGTON (March 31) -- Vice President Al Gore has been vocal in his support for the NATO mission in Yugoslavia and for his boss' handling of the situation.

"We must make the cost to (Yugoslav leader Slobodan) Milosevic so great that he changes his calculations and stops this murderous activity," Gore said Monday.

Gore is echoing his president, denouncing Milosevic and supporting NATO's round-the-clock air assault of Yugoslavia.

But as candidate Gore campaigns to succeed President Bill Clinton, he could pay a political price if the administration's Yugoslavia policy lacks public support.

"Bill Clinton is taking the biggest public policy risk of his career and Gore just has to be there with him all the way," says Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution. "Otherwise what happens -- it becomes a Hubert Humphrey situation."

It was in 1968 when another Democratic vice president, Hubert Humphrey lost his presidential bid in part because of the unpopularity of President Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam policy.

But one Gore adviser finds fault with the Vietnam analogy.

"This is not that kind of issue that is going to define the essence of the period in which we live," says Bruce Jentlesen, a Gore foreign policy adviser. "It has definite aspects that could be politically problematic depending upon whether the policy succeeds or not. But I don't think it at all is of the magnitude that Vietnam was."

Gore, a Vietnam War veteran, and arms control expert in Congress, was one of the few Democratic senators to support the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

Gore is heavily involved in Clinton Administration foreign policy, attending National Security briefings and routinely assigned by the president to head working groups on Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the Ukraine.

The vice president is also the administration's point person with Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov.

And it was Gore who briefed three former U.S. presidents on the impending air campaign in Yugoslavia.

"This is a situation in which the vice president by definition is a shadow," Hess comments. "He must move the way the president moves, he can't move independently and at this point he should move forcefully."

American public opinion has been divided on U.S. involvement in Kosovo but Gore's aides say policy, not politics, is driving a position that he not only supports but helped to develop.

Wednesday, March 31, 1999

• First lady 'horrified' at Serb attacks on Kosovo, Milosevic's 'manipulation' of truth
• McCain introduces himself to New Hampshire
• Could Kosovo make Gore another Hubert Humphrey?
• Committee: Government cannot accurately report location of billions in assets
• Witness: Jim McDougal wanted his ex to cooperate with Starr
• Supreme Court to hear first of several states' rights cases
• Bush exploratory committee says it has raised $6 million
• White House, nearly half of federal agencies miss Y2K deadline
• McCain to offer Internet bill
• New Hampshire House rejects income tax plan
• Some journalists say they don't always believe the media either

ARCHIVES