FOCUS ON GORE UNCOVERS PLENTY OF PROBLEMS

The infamous Bhuddist temple fund raiser. "Missing" e-mails, found years after the fact, even though they had long been under subpoena. "No controlling legal authority." Chinese arms dealers and agents of that country's intelligence apparatus delivering cash by the bucketload to the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign, then invited into the Oval Office at photo-op time. A Janet Reno justice department known, tragically, as a cynical joke for persistent refusal to do its job. These and other fundraising images haunt Vice President Al Gore as he seeks to become only the second sitting vice president to win the White House since 1836. (The other was George Bush in 1988).

The Bhuddist temple fund raiser itself amounts to an elaborate felony: A criminal conspiracy to violate campaign laws and defraud the Federal Election Commission. Tens of thousands of dollars in illegal contributions were accepted from monks and nuns who had taken lifelong vows of poverty. These contributions were of course "laundered" donations from other, illegal sources. Mr. Gore's longtime fund raiser, Maria Hsia, was convicted of multiple felonies recently and, in the manner of loyal Clinton-Gore hands, will probably be paid hush money to keep quiet. The vice president has been caught flat-out lying about the whole matter, as when he denied, against all evidence, that he knew it to be a fund raiser.

The vice president has also been almost certainly lying concerning his making fund-raising phone calls from the White House the origin of his "no controlling authority" remark. This isn't some obscure law we're talking about: It is the Pendleton Act, passed in 1883, which prohibits the requesting of campaign donations on federal property, so as to prevent extortion of federal employees. Every junior congressional staffer gets schooled in this law as soon as he or she arrives on Captiol Hill. Gore spent 16 years in Congress and was certainly familiar with the practice of every senator and representative trekking over to the Democratic and Republican campaign shops so as to avoid violations.

The disgraceful litany of grotesque Clinton-Gore scandals constitute a black mark among the worst in all American history. Texas Gov. George Bush must make the case, whether polls show any advantage in doing so or not. There will be honor merely in the effort. If voters elect the vice president this November, we will be enablers of future, continuing degradation of standards in our highest office, and will have no one to blame but ourselves.