They were two political partners who had barely spoken for a year, but a few days after Al Gore
conceded the 2000 presidential election, he and Bill Clinton were finally talking face to face.

For more than an hour, in what sources close to both men described as uncommonly blunt language,
Gore forcefully told Clinton that his sex scandal and low personal approval ratings were a major
impediment to his presidential campaign. Clinton, according to people close to him, was initially taken
aback but responded with equal force that it was Gore's failure to run on the administration's record
that hobbled his ambitions.

The White House meeting, which Gore sought, was a doleful postscript to a relationship that once was
exceptionally close but had deteriorated badly over the course of Gore's 2000 race. Its significance,
however, was more than personal. The question the two men were debating -- why did Gore not capture
the White House? -- is the same one confronting Democrats broadly as they assess the lessons of 2000.

If Gore hopes to seek the presidency again, moreover, several Democratic strategists say he will almost
certainly need to establish a better footing for his relationship with Clinton -- who remains a powerful figure
within the party despite the blunders that marked his exit from the White House.

Only Clinton and Gore were present for the showdown session, which never appeared even on internal
schedules distributed to White House staff. But people close to both have described its tone in similar language.
"Tense" was the description of one adviser to Clinton, while a Gore aide called it "cathartic."
One Democrat who has worked closely with both men called the session "very, very blunt."

Where descriptions differ is on the conclusion of the meeting. Some Democrats who heard descriptions
from one or the other of the two participants said the meeting essentially ratified what for many months
had been an unspoken truth between the two men: Their relationship suffered irreparable harm in the
wake of the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal and Clinton's lies to Gore and the nation about it. Gore,
said one Democrat, "seemed eager to get things off his chest."

Others put a more upbeat cast on the session, calling it a useful air-clearing that should allow the two men
to move forward. "They had to cover a lot of territory," said one Democrat close to Clinton and Gore.
"My impression was it was a very constructive meeting."

"He felt it was a very good conversation," said one adviser to the former vice president.

Jake Siewert, a spokesman for Clinton, and Kiki McLean, a spokeswoman for Gore, said their bosses
would not comment on a private conversation.

Gore and Clinton saw each other several times after the talk but before the end of the administration
and also spoke by phone; aides said these conversations were polite, but not consequential.

And they have not come close to finding common ground on why Gore is not president today.
In fact, on this large issue and several minor ones, there are open wounds between the camps of
Democratic aides allied with one man or the other -- resentments that have been rubbed anew since Jan. 20.

Many Clinton advisers were infuriated by a post-election analysis Gore consultant Carter Eskew published
Jan. 30 in The Washington Post in which he said the "deep dissatisfaction and anger" felt by swing voters
over Clinton's scandals was "the elephant in the living room" preventing Gore from making his case.

A senior White House official close to Clinton scoffed: "I don't think the fact that they lost four out of four
debates had anything to do with Bill Clinton." By this reckoning, neither Gore nor his running mate, Joe
Lieberman (D-Conn.), made a compelling case in showdowns against President Bush and VP Cheney.

As a general rule, aides close to Clinton say, he was less upset than often reported by Gore's efforts to
distance himself publicly from the president. And, with the exception of the last 10 days or so of the
general election -- when he desperately wanted to hit the road in key states but was told no by the
Gore campaign -- he did not expect a significant role as a Gore proxy. But he was mystified, and at
times angered, by Gore's refusal to run on the strong economy and other issues in which Clinton felt
both he and his vice president deserved credit. Just as voters made a distinction between Clinton's
personal conduct and his job performance, Clinton believed Gore could campaign on the record
without being tied to the president's scandals.

Clinton, Democrats said, never fully appreciated the degree of Gore's resentments, and how they
colored his political calculations. "Gore came in all knotted up, and it surprised him," one aide said.

As many Clinton people view it, Gore took a basic political problem -- how to use his affiliation with
the administration while establishing his own identity -- and made it more complex than necessary.
He was often palpably uncomfortable when talking about Clinton, and his fumbling answers to the
question of whether Clinton would campaign for him elevated this to a major subplot of the fall campaign.
Although there were periodic reports of their tension during the campaign, a Democrat close to both men
said, "It was far worse than anyone knew."

As many Clinton supporters see it, the president was less of a political issue than an emotional hurdle for Gore.
By this account, family members, especially Tipper Gore, disliked Clinton even more strongly. "Gore had this
sort of psychological analysis in which anything Clinton did was inadequate," said one Democratic operative
who has worked with both men.

The two camps around both men have also become estranged. Some senior Clinton advisers said they were
once close to many top Gore advisers, including Eskew, but friendships among a generation of Democratic
operatives ruptured during 2000. More recently, sources said, former Clinton chief of staff John D. Podesta
is angry that Gore aides have allowed Clinton to take blame for pranks in the Eisenhower Executive Office
Building, even though most of the mischief took place in the vice president's offices.

One Democratic strategist said that whether Gore works for a rapprochement with Clinton will be one sign
of whether he wants to try again for the office that so narrowly eluded him. "If he does," this Clinton supporter
said, "he's going to have to be large enough to move off the last campaign and at least get some closure."
 

© 2001 The Washington Post Company