Campaign Finance Could Hurt Gore If Spotlight Stays Focused On Deeds
By Peter Roff

"I’ve concluded that there is no reasonable possibility that further investigation would produce evidence to warrant charges." With these words Attorney General Janet Reno has refused, for the third time, to name an outside investigator to look into whether the vice president broke the law while raising funds for the 1996 Clinton/Gore re-election effort.

Robert Conrad, head of the Justice Department’s Campaign Task Force, had urged the Attorney General to name such counsel to determine whether Gore had lied to investigators when he said he did not know a campaign event at a Buddhist temple in California was a fund-raiser. Reports indicate that $60,000 in illegal donations was collected at the event. Several prominent fund-raisers connected with the event have been convicted of charges that donor identities were deliberately hidden.

Previously, Attorney General Reno declined to name an outside counsel to look into phone calls the vice president made from federal facilities in violation of existing federal laws to raise campaign funds. The Attorney General also previously declined to name a counsel to investigate if Gore lied when he said he thought he was soliciting unregulated "soft," not hard dollars, for campaign ‘96.

As the saying goes—which Janet Reno appears never to have heard—where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

So the campaign finance investigation is another one-day story. That’s good for Al Gore because, as long as campaign finance isn’t in the headlines, it’s a non-issue. He needs the fall campaign to be, to the extent it’s about ethics and honesty, about Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton, not Maria Hsia and Buddhist temples.

The leak from Appellate Court Judge Richard Cudahy, a Democrat, that a new grand jury was investigating Clinton and Lewinsky is a godsend for Gore. It keeps the ethics issue right where Gore wants it.

And Bill Clinton is playing along very nicely. His latest round of lip-quavering apologies are designed to absolve the vice president of any responsibility for all the ethical lapses of the Clinton/Gore Administration, not just Monica. "No reasonable person would hold Al Gore responsible for my mistakes," he says.

The people care whether or not four more years of Al Gore would mean more lapses from a president. The so-called Clinton scandals have shown up in the polls as a drag on Gore. Gore has either to change the subject or escape the blame.

If the country can be convinced to look the other way, towards Lewinsky and away from Maria Hsia, Buddhist temples, "no controlling legal authority," Citizen Action, and the other misdeeds in the 1996 campaign, then Al Gore has a chance of pulling it off.

If, on the other hand, Republicans and the news media can keep the discussion focused on what Al Gore did, when he did it, whether or not it was illegal, and how much money was involved, then he doesn’t have a chance. Either way, it’s sleight-of-hand worthy of Blackstone the Great.

Peter Roff is a political strategist and frequent contributor to the Fox News Channel, MSNBC and Newsboom.com. As Political Director of Newt Gingrich’s GOPAC, he was responsible for training thousands of political candidates across the country. He can be reached at peter_roff@hotmail.com.