If Gore won, how would he be doing?

WASHINGTON -- It is a measure of President Bush's sudden new stature that Washington liberals, of all people, are musing that perhaps the country is better off with Bush as commander in chief than we would have been with former Vice President Al Gore.

Such speculation has been circulating among Republicans since Sept. 11, but it is news that some Democrats are reluctantly beginning to agree.

This bipartisan attitude reflects a growing awareness that Bush is competently leading the fight to protect national security. It is not based on any philosophical embrace of his domestic, social and economic policies, which are still unpopular outside conservative circles. The president has risen admirably to the terrorist challenge.

Meanwhile, Gore is powerless and practically invisible, in no position to be competitive.

Inevitably, Bush looks strong and Gore looks weak. It is in the nature of their contrasting roles.

There is a great deal of silly talk that Bush is surrounded with smarter foreign-policy advisers than Gore would have had, that he is a better public communicator and has a deeper understanding of military strategy. Unfortunately, some people have the attention span of a gnat.

Bush had virtually no experience in foreign policy and international affairs before becoming president. Unlike Gore, he never served in Vietnam and he has traditionally had trouble speaking coherently without a script. His principal advisers lend gravitas to his administration, but they are aging warriors out of office since the Cold War who had little familiarity with the complexity of fighting modern terrorism.

The president has transformed his image by demonstrating forceful leadership during this crisis. He is even learning to speak spontaneously with sincerity and spunk. Although he repeats himself a great deal, what he says carries a powerful patriotic message.

If their positions were reversed, would Gore do as well? Who knows? He would certainly have entered the White House with stronger intellectual credentials, broader military experience and a reputation for pressing former President Clinton to be more aggressive overseas, particularly in Bosnia.

Unlike Bush, who came to office determined to go it alone on treaties and other international programs, as well as avoid any hint of nation-building, Gore talked during last year's campaign about the need for international coalitions and engaging other countries in joint military and economic actions.

Bush has come around to the wisdom of those strategies, which he formerly opposed, but Gore was there all along.

Even so, it might have been more difficult politically for Gore to forge ahead in Afghanistan than it was for Bush. The military never fully approved of Clinton, and a residue of that distrust might have complicated any Gore military campaign. Bush seems popular with the troops, an advantage that could be crucial if the war turns nasty with huge loss of life.

As a fellow conservative, Bush has been able to keep the super-hawkish right wing from successfully pushing prematurely to attack Iraq and other countries that harbor terrorist camps. Such irresponsibly bellicose demands are in the air but not yet at fever pitch.

As a liberal, Gore would have been under constant pressure from the hawks to prove his manhood by following their intemperate advice. He would have had a devil of a time keeping the right-wing jingoists from undermining his authority with their carping.

Gore's own natural liberal and moderate constituencies are muted during this national emergency. They support the president as Gore himself does.

He recently repeated what he had earlier said after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "He is president of the United States," Gore noted, "And I refuse to second-guess his decisions in this matter."

There is nothing else Gore can responsibly do without seeming obstructionist and unpatriotic. There is no way he can discuss how he might disagree with the president's tactical and strategic decisions while our armed forces are in dangerous battle.

Actually, there might be little that he would have done differently up to this point. The names and faces of his advisers were not those of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld or Colin Powell, but they were steeped in a similar foreign-policy background and might well have arrived at the same conclusions.

The public mood is certain to evolve as the war rages on. These early skirmishes are the easy part. The true wisdom of Bush's military and diplomatic leadership can be determined only as events unfold.

On the home front, however, we already know that Gore would have been pursuing economic and social priorities and policies distinct from those of Bush's. Gore's concept of expanding federal programs to stimulate the economy, help the unemployed, conserve energy and improve American life were far more realistic and hopeful than the massive tax cuts for corporations and wealthy individuals that Bush persists in favoring.

In a strictly economic sense, Gore would indeed have been a better president than Bush.

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