La Donna Is Catastrophe : Gore's ghastly Brazile - Al Gore's campaign manager, Donna Brazile

National Review, Feb 7, 2000 by John J. Miller

DONNA BRAZILE displays a sack of potting soil in her office at Gore campaign headquarters. "This is the only dirt in this campaign," she likes to tell visitors. "I'm going to spread joy and good news about Al Gore, a great fighter and a proven leader. I can talk about him all day."

She's certainly been doing a lot of talking lately, and not just about Gore. Brazile, who is Gore's campaign manager, recently said Republicans would "rather take pictures with black children than feed them." She singled out the GOP's two most prominent African Americans for special abuse: "The Republicans bring out Colin Powell and J. C. Watts because they have no program, no policy....They have no love and no joy."

A little bag of dirt, it appears, goes a long way. The 40-year-old Brazile has become one of Gore's chief liabilities since becoming his campaign manager in October. She has been a figure of almost nonstop controversy thanks to a string of witless comments, often focused on racial grievances. Whenever Brazile opens her mouth, it seems, something toxic spills out. Gore's handlers run a never-ending clean-up operation in her wake, and the candidate himself is often sucked into the mess. It's hard not to think that Gore has had second and third thoughts about whether he should have promoted her in the first place.

Gore, however, will never allow these thoughts to become actions. Brazile may not be the first black person to head a major presidential campaign- Ken Blackwell is chairman for Steve Forbes-but she's definitely the first black woman to serve as a top candidate's campaign manager. And for that reason, the Gore team cannot let her fail; the vice president will most assuredly not permit himself to become the first candidate to fire or demote a black campaign manager.

And make no mistake: Brazile's race is key. When Gore announced her promotion, he didn't do it at a routine press event in Washington or New Hampshire, as might be expected. He did it in front of a group of black leaders at a Nashville restaurant. Brazile's function is to symbolize the Gore campaign as much as run it.

That's not to say Brazile doesn't know her way around a campaign trail. In a 1989 interview, she called herself "a Democrat who was a former Republican when I was growing up." (In 1979, she worked for David Treen, a Republican, who ran for-and won-the governorship.) Yet she was apparently active in Democratic politics before she could even vote, volunteering in behalf of the Carter-Mondale ticket in her home state of Louisiana in 1976. After being graduated from college, she got involved in liberal civil-rights causes and joined Jesse Jackson's 1984 presidential campaign. In 1988, she worked for Dick Gephardt, and is widely credited in Democratic circles with helping him win the Iowa caucuses. Later, the Michael Dukakis campaign absorbed her, but spat her out shortly before the election when, in front of scribbling reporters, she called George Bush a racist and suggested he was an adulterer. "The American people have every right to know if Barbara Bush will share that bed with him in the White House," she said. Dukakis fired her and apologized to his opponent.

In 1990, she resurfaced as chief of staff to Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia's delegate to Congress. Brazile occasionally worked on Democratic campaigns, but not at the presidential level. In 1998, she ran a project for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to increase black turnout-a smashing success, by all accounts, and partly responsible for the Democrats' unexpected gains in the House that year. President Clinton even sent her a note of thanks for her efforts; to this day, it remains in a file that she keeps with her at all times.

In truth, Brazile isn't managing the Gore campaign, and she doesn't even have a particularly prominent role in determining Gore's strategy. She can explain it well enough-win in Iowa, do well in New Hampshire, make Bill Bradley defend his base in the Northeast, and crush him in the South-but she's not calling those shots. That job belongs to campaign chairman Tony Coelho. Media gurus Carter Eskew and Bob Shrum are also considered more influential. "Donna is great at getting out the vote and running phone banks," says one Gore insider. "But she's not in charge. She's campaign manager in name only." Adds Robert Borosage, a Democratic activist and co- director of the Campaign for America's Future: "It would not be accurate to call her a figurehead, but it's important to remember that job titles are all very fungible in the era of media."

And it's this job title-campaign manager-that has caused Gore so many headaches. When Brazile told the Washington Post in November that she wouldn't allow herself to be pushed around by the "white boys," she helpfully explained, "A white-boy attitude is 'I must exclude, denigrate, and leave behind.'" She also said that in the world of politics, a woman must choose between being a "bitch" (i.e., an activist) and a "whore" (i.e., a paid consultant). "I chose bitch," she said.