Al Gore

IN the last two decades, the Democrats have won a single presidential election. If they fail to nominate Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore '69 they will most likely continue their losing streak.

Let's face it. Gore is the most electable of all the Democratic candidates and the one whom Republicans fear the most. Furthermore, Gore is the one candidate who stands squarely in the Democratic Party's proud tradition of international leadership, economic growth, and social justice. He promises a return to the pragmatism and hard-nosed leadership that characterized the Democratic Party of Franklin D. Roosevelt '04, Harry S. Truman, and John F. Kennedy '40.

AFTER the Reagan Administration, this nation needs a leader comfortable and expert with foreign affairs. Gore's experience and expertise here outshadows those of his rivals. Considered one of the Senate's leading experts on arms control, Gore, along with other moderate Democrats, successfully has prodded the Administration towards a real arms control policy--finally culminating in the INF treaty. Alone among the Democratic candidates, Gore supports humanitarian assistance to the Nicaraguan contras as a way to honor the Arias Peace Plan and ensure Sandinista good intentions.

Gore has supported the Administration's successful policy of reflagging Kuwaiti tankers, which has kept the sea lanes open, protected a vital U.S. strategic interest, and stymied Iran's expansionist policy. Only now are the other Democratic candidates belatedly beginning to endorse this policy. While opposing development and deployment of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), Gore supports limited research in order to keep the U.S. prepared in case the Soviets develop a similar system. Although these views may not be endorsed by Jesse Helms or Jesse Jackson, they represent a judicious, pragmatic foreign policy, one which does not wear ideological blinders.

GORE brings his Congressional experience and level-headed pragmatism to domestic issues as well. With the departure of Gov. Bruce Babbitt from the race, Gore is now the only candidate in either party with a credible budget plan, one that seeks to hammer out a new consensus on fiscal policy. Unlike Reagan, who scuttled budget talks by refusing to raise taxes or cut defense expenditures, Gore would put almost everything on the table. That's not to say, however, that Gore wouldn't have his own list of priorities: he'll cut spending where it doesn't endanger national security or cut essential services. On the revenue side, Gore would work to close remaining tax loopholes, ensure better tax compliance, and support better tax compliance, and support new taxes as long as they are progressive and proinvestment.

Compare that with the more simplistic and unrealistic proposals his rivals have offered so far. While Senator Paul Simon promises us that "the figures are there" to support his claims for both a massive spending program and a balanced budget, the numbers show otherwise. Gov. Michael Dukakis's budget plan, which consists of collecting unpaid taxes and saying that "tough choices have to be made," fails to make any decisions on taxes and spending. Jesse Jackson's plan to reduce the deficit by making very deep cuts in defense spending may balance the budget, but only by drastically weakening this nation's national security. And any self-respecting Democrat should ignore whatever Congressman Richard Gephardt has to say on the budget deficit, since he supported the Administration's disastrous 1981 tax cut which helped to create it.

THE recent electoral record makes it clear that Democratic candidates who fare badly in the South cannot expect to win in November. And with the possible exception of Gephardt--a "pandering populist" whose flip-flops on a number of important issues and support for protectionist trade legislation reveals him as the cynical political opportunist he is--Gore is the only Democratic candidate capable of succeeding in the South Vice President George Bush or Sen. Robert Dole.

However, even though Gore is the Democratic candidate most likely to win votes in the South, he is far from being a racist, conservative good ol' boy. Like his father--former Senator Albert Gore, Sr., who, alone among all Southern senators, refused to sign the "Southern Manifesto" attacking "Brown v. Board of Education"--Gore has been a strong supporter of civil rights legislation and has vehemently criticized recent Administration attempts to gut the Voting Rights Act and affirmative action. Indeed, after Jackson, Gore is the top choice of several major civil rights groups. Gore has also sponsored and supported legislation to increase federal aid to the homeless, helped create the Environmental Protection Agency Superfund, and has attacked the Administration's attempts to slash student aid for higher education.

Critics will point to Gore's youth and to his "patrician background" as making him unfit to be president. Yet "patrician backgrounds" hardly affected the ability of FDR and JFK to govern on behalf of the less fortunate members of our society. Those who bring up Gore's age do so simply because they have nothing more substantial to raise against him, since, at 39, he already possesses 11 years of Congressional experience and a substantive legislative record.

Gore is a talented campaigner and a highly formidable debater who would give the Republicans fits in the general election precisely because he can't be pigeonholed as "soft" on communism or as a big spender. While remaining loyal to the Democratic Party's liberal traditions, Gore would be able to bring moderate voters back into its fold, and thereby propel it back into the White House.