Demand grows for COM's Gore biographer

By Eric McHenry

Robert Zelnick may have resigned his job as senior correspondent for ABC News, but he certainly hasn't disappeared from the media.

In the past few weeks, Zelnick has been interviewed, excerpted, or mentioned by the Boston Globe, WGBH-TV's Greater Boston, the Washington Times, Newsday, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and the Deseret (Utah) News, among others. As election coverage intensifies, the veteran reporter and author of Al Gore: A Political Life (Regnery, 1999) has found his opinions increasingly sought after.

Robert Zelnick speaks about his book, Gore: A Political Life, at a recent appearance at Barnes & Noble. Photo by Andrea Raynor

"I'm very pleased," says Zelnick, COM visiting professor of journalism, "that I've been asked, frequently, to comment not only on Al Gore but on politics generally, and on any number of national security affairs."

Zelnick left ABC in early 1998 when network executives, citing what they deemed a potential conflict of interest, told him he'd either have to discontinue work on his biography of the vice president or leave. He moved on to the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, a conservative research center that had awarded him a fellowship to complete the book. While there, he received a phone call from an old colleague, COM Dean Brent Baker.

"I met Bob Zelnick when he was the Pentagon reporter for ABC, during the Gulf War, and I was chief of information for the Navy," Baker recalls. "So I knew him and I knew his work."

The phone call concluded, as Baker had hoped it would, with mutual expressions of interest in Zelnick's coming to BU.

"He thought that after almost 30 years in the business, he really would like to teach what he'd learned to the next generation," Baker says.

The career change has proved a positive one. Now in his fourth semester as a visiting professor, Zelnick recently accepted a five-year appointment. He says he likes his newfound latitude to analyze and weigh in on issues, both as a professor and as a freelance pundit.

"It's liberating," he says, "and it's enjoyable. It's also a prerogative of age. I've made a transition professionally from being an active member of the daily working press to teaching, sitting back a little bit and contemplating things and offering perspective that's the product of both research and experience."

Gore: A Political Life is a study in such perspective. Scrupulously researched, it also contains a healthy dose of interpretation. The Al Gore that Zelnick presents is complex and ambiguous, with priorities and ambitions that often seem at odds with one another. A committed friend and family man, he is capable of being "ruthless," Zelnick says, to perceived political enemies. An experienced policymaker with a nose for sound legislation, he has brought what Zelnick calls "a kind of frantic, inquisitorial approach to the issue of global warming." A former divinity school student with deeply held principles, he has a long history of apparent mendacities.

"I think it sort of falls into two categories with Gore," says Zelnick. "There's the kind of puffing that you would expect from a kid who's trying to convince his father that he's meeting the exalted standards the old man has set, which was certainly a factor in Gore's upbringing."

The other, more insidious variety, Zelnick says, is "opportunistic misrepresentation, because he doesn't think he'll get caught on it. I think he's misrepresented his position on campaign finance reform, vis-á-vis that of Senator [Bill] Bradley, for example. He's certainly misrepresented his position on abortion."

"Gore," Zelnick concludes on the book's penultimate page, "is no longer the Eagle Scout of American politics."

The biography got no cooperation from Gore, who was not, his press secretary told Zelnick early on, participating in any of several book projects then in the works. Nevertheless, Gore: A Political Life teems with testimony from friends, staffers and former staffers, supporters and detractors, and with quotes the vice president gave in past interviews.

Despite his reservations about the vice president's integrity and judgment, Zelnick believes Gore would make a stronger president than his chief opponent for the Democratic party nomination.

"He's never been a good working politician," Zelnick says of Bradley. "I think there are too many inner voices that he's listening to."

Asked who he'd bet on to be the next president, Zelnick says, after a long pause, "George Bush."

"I think he'll do well among Republicans wire-to-wire," he says. "I think he'll be helped as the field narrows and people like Keyes and Forbes become nonfactors or drop out entirely. I think Bush will succeed to much of that vote. And I think he'll close the gap somewhat, simply by applying the lessons of New Hampshire."

Asked who might be the subject of his next biography, Zelnick replies, again after a reflective pause, that he's long been attracted to the idea of taking a fresh look at Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Circumstances, however, have always kept the project shelved.

"But there are all kinds of people who interest me," he says. "I wish I had thought of the Vince Lombardi biography before David Maraniss did."