IN ANOTHER TIME - perhaps any other time - Vice-President Al Gore would have this election in the bag. He hasn't. Despite the glow from a stellar economy and a sense of a mighty new technological age, plus all the advantages from fighting as an incumbent, his situation is growing more troubled as the November vote approaches.
Just consider the polls. On a given day a single poll - usually taken from a sample of just over 1,000 Americans - means little. Over time, they start to mean something, both individual tracking polls and en masse. Since early this year there have been more than 200 major polls ranking the popularity of Mr Gore against that of his Republican rival Texas Governor George W. Bush - a figure of crushing mediocrity. Mr Gore has finished ahead in about five.
Ordinary Democrats say they are terrified of the problems he is now up against. Talk to some of the Democrats' most powerful insiders about their chances and their fears bubble to the surface between the superlatives.
Take Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the committee that organised the Democratic convention now unfolding in Los Angeles. Mr McAuliffe is a consummate Democrat insider. He golfs with President Bill Clinton and bankrolled the first family's new home in Westchester, New York. In May he organised America's most successful political fund-raising event - a single Washington dinner that pulled in an estimated US$25 million (about HK$195 million).
With a fixed grin and a wink, he comes across as the Florida property developer he once was, selling you a political party as if it was a condo on Miami beach. He talks of the convention as 'the greatest event in the history of American politics'. Mr Clinton is simply the 'greatest of presidents'. Of Mr Gore, he is going to 'come out of here like a turbo-charged rocket headed to that general election'. Then he says something interesting. 'The American public is going to know who Al Gore is,' he thunders.
But Mr McAuliffe, why after eight years in power do the American people not know who he is? 'I think it has been hard for the vice-president because he is vice-president,' he says. 'It is very hard for a vice-president in our country to break out of the shadow of a president. And I will tell you, a president like Bill Clinton - very charismatic, a true leader across the world, who is bigger than life, and it is very hard to move beyond that.'
In breaking out of that 'shadow', Mr Gore is facing many problems. It is in part, of course, the legacy of Mr Clinton's adulterous relationship with Monica Lewinsky and the lies that followed. Make no mistake that Monica - never mentioned by name by either party - hangs over the election at every turn in incalculable ways. It has put the Democrats and Mr Gore on the defensive, forcing them to respond to the Republican fight for the centre rather than setting the scene themselves. It has even affected his choice of running mate in Senator Joe Lieberman, one Democrat who voiced sadness and anger at the potential for greatness Mr Clinton put at risk.
