Bob Kolasky is the managing editor of IntellectualCapital.com. His e-mail address is bob@voxcap.com

In mid-February in New Orleans, Vice President Al Gore held a meeting with key leaders of the powerful AFL-CIO, who were supporting his bid for the presidency, including the organization's head John Sweeney. Although only the participants are sure of what was said in the meeting, Sweeney left the meeting saying he had heard what he wanted from the vice president.

"The vice president said that when he's elected president, he wouldn't sign a trade agreement unless it did provide for ... labor standards and environmental protections," Sweeney told USA Today. "That's going further than [President Clinton] is willing to go. We trust him."

Sweeney and his allies in organized labor were pleased because Gore apparently had indicated to them that he had reservations about granting China permanent normal trade-relation status (PNTR) so that the communist country could accede into the World Trade Organization. Sweeney took this to mean that the vice president was "better" on -- i.e., less in favor of -- free trade than Clinton.

Sweeney's interpretations of the meeting created a minor firestorm. Some of Gore's business allies expressed dismay that the vice president, long an ardent free trader, would weaken his pro-trade stance and undermine Clinton's push for PNTR. And the day after Sweeney's USA Today interview, Gore spokesman Doug Hattaway was forced to issue a statement saying that the vice president would "urge Congress to pass" the administration's policy as currently drafted.

The battle for the heart of the party

That story is a good demonstration of the balancing act facing Gore as he prepares himself to be the Democratic nominee in the 2000 presidential race.

Gore's easy victory in the Democratic nominating fight, which is all but assured, can be credited in large part to his support among traditional interest groups within the Democratic Party. Unions, women's rights groups and minority groups all have coalesced around the vice president, as have a large majority of elected Democratic officials, giving Gore almost the entire institutional strength of the Democratic Party.

Is Bradley's approach to Gore working?

This support has seemed to perplex Gore's rival for the Democratic nomination, former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley. At times, Bradley appears incredulous that, given Gore's record, the official liberal wing of the party -- from Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) to the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League -- has so strongly supported the vice president.

Bradley has taken to trying to discredit the vice president among Democratic voters. His latest tactic, highlighted in last week's debate in New York City's Apollo Theatre and in the creation of www.moreaboutgore.com, an anti-Gore Web site, is to brand the vice president as a one-time "conservative congressman."

The political strategy behind Bradley's Hail Mary is questionable. Gore's eight years in the Clinton administration -- and his slew of Democratic constituency group endorsements -- pretty much inoculate him from any positions he took while in Congress in the 1980s.

But still the Democratic underdog has a point. Appearing on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews" Monday night, Bradley suggested that Gore, when talking to Democratic liberal groups, would say what he thought they wanted to hear and then would do the same thing when talking to centrist New Democrats. In the interview, Bradley insinuated that Gore is guilty of sacrificing his core beliefs in order to try to be all things to all people. He cited last month's PNTR controversy as proof.

The New Democrat question

One suspects that instead of harping on Gore's "conservative" record, Bradley would have been better off sticking to the all-things-to-all-people theme. In his campaign, Gore is showing signs of being positively Clintonian in appealing to all sides of the Democratic Party, and this leaves the vice president vulnerable to the argument that he does not have core ideological beliefs -- and that any Gore administration would lack an overarching governing philosophy.

That charge resonates, and it is worth examining because it appears more and more likely that Gore is going to be sworn in as president next January.

Despite his impressive record of liberal endorsements, Gore is generally considered a New Democrat. The vice president was a conservative congressman -- at least among Democrats. He was one of the founding members of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), the flagship organization of New Democrats. The current head of the DLC, Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT), endorses Gore, saying that the vice president "is ready to keep America changing in the New Democrat direction."

As vice president, Gore's most prominent policy interventions favored centrist, New Democratic positions such as reinventing government. By all accounts, he played a lead role in convincing the president to sign the 1996 welfare-reform bill; he led the charge for passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA); and he was for strong action against the Serbs during the 1999 Kosovo conflict.

Solidifying Gore's New Democratic credentials is the general dismissal he gets from the intelligentsia of the left. Magazines like The Nation and The Progressive offer tepid commentary at best, condescending at worst, on the vice president. And most prominent leftist intellectuals consider Gore no ally whatsoever. In its Sept. 16, 1999, issue, The Nation ran a series entitled "Elections 2000 -- A Bad Dream?" in which several progressive authors decried the Democrats' two-leading candidates.

Georgetown law professor Norman Birnbaum expressed the general sentiment of the authors' opinion of the vice president: "The Washington hustlers in charge of his campaign, Gore's own connections to the most egregious of the new wealthy on Wall Street, his singular mixture of cravenness and conventionality in foreign affairs, are repellent," Birnbaum wrote.

Friend of the left

But "Al Gore as New Democrat" is not the whole story. The way he has run his campaign seems to belie any such claim.

Does Gore fit into the New Democrats?

Although he started his campaign talking about centrist initiatives such as smart growth and promoting faith-based efforts to fight poverty, Gore has run a traditional Democratic primary campaign. His campaign strategy clearly echoes Walter Mondale's 1984 campaign against Gary Hart (the negative response to which was one of the catalysts for the formation of the DLC).

And some of the positions Gore has taken -- and emphasized -- on the stump are straight liberal positions. He has advocated eliminating the ban on gays in the military, protecting affirmative action, raising the minimum wage and expanding the federal commitment to education.

In that sense, Gore has been more of an old Democrat than a new one. When he went to Harlem and paid homage to Rev. Al Sharpton at the Apollo Theatre, he was clearly practicing interest-group politics.

One of the key moments of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign for president was when he publicly distanced himself from controversial rapper Sister Souljah. Gore, given the opportunity to publicly chastise Sharpton for his past statements, instead said nothing.

"In a lot of ways Gore is at his worst as a candidate," says Bill Turque, author of the forthcoming Gore biography, Inventing Al Gore. "He tends to be a partisan sniper and to be disingenuous ... often exaggerating his accomplishments."

A Clinton Democrat?

The difference between Gore's political record and his campaign record render any assessment of a potential Gore presidency difficult. The answers to questions such as who Gore would appoint in his administration and whether the Democrats can regain Congress (quite possible in the House, less so in the Senate) would, of course, go a long way toward establishing his priorities. Plus, there is the question of how Gore would deal with the ghost of the current administration.

Gore's record and public comments seem to indicate a continuation of Clintonism, and any clear lines of demarcation remain unseen. Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution argues that for the most part Gore would stick to the Clinton agenda -- with a shift in priorities. "Gore brings a different set of interests to the White House, a strong interest in science and tech, for example," Mann says.

Still, Mann says, the prominent difference between Clinton and Gore would be in style rather than substance. For example, a lot of Gore's success would rely on how the vice president would deal with Congress. "Gore tends to be more distinctly partisan in approach than Clinton," Mann says. "He doesn't have Clinton's light touch."

Another difference between a Clinton administration and a Gore administration might simply be the time period they govern. Clinton's light touch has, since 1995, helped the president keep an uneasy coalition of Democrats from splintering, but that will not last forever. By avoiding large initiatives, the president has succeeded at keeping all of his constituencies satisfied, if not exactly thrilled. This has happened for a number of reasons: Clinton's political acumen, the unprecedented period of economic growth, the surprising budget surpluses and, in no small part, the memory among Democrats of the stark electoral defeat in 1994.

Keeping the various Democratic constituencies together is going to be among Gore's biggest challenge, says Turque. "Gore is not as conciliatory as Clinton. He is not the kind of hugs and hand-holding politician that Bill Clinton is. When he doesn't agree with you he lets you know about it pretty strongly."

As president, Gore would have to deal with the shadow of Clintonism. It is hard to envision Gore being able to govern as defensively, yet popularly, as Clinton has in the last four years. Eventually he would be forced -- whether by changing circumstances, by his allies who helped elect him president or by his own desire for his administration to leave a mark -- to differentiate himself from Clinton on policy questions in a substantial way.

So far, however, despite occasional wanderings, Gore has chosen not to do so. And if he is elected president in 2000, it will be not as an old or new Democrat but as a little of both: a true Clinton Democrat.