See Dick run Gephardt ponders presidential campaign

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- After 25 years in national politics, it's impossible to calculate how many times Richard A. Gephardt has been standing in a room like this: a crowded, warm, featureless reception hall at an arts center, where the line for the bar is too long, the lights are too dim and the ceiling is too low.

Yet Gephardt, the Missouri congressman who leads the House Democrats, betrays neither boredom nor impatience. In a dark blue suit, blue shirt and red tie, he stands on a hot summer evening as solidly as a rock in a river, his handshake firm, his gaze earnest as he greets the lawyers and developers who stream past him at this party for big donors to the Florida Democratic Party.

"Good to see you," he says to one. "Thanks for all the work you are doing," he says to another.

Other than, perhaps, former Vice President Al Gore, no one considering a campaign for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination has shaken as many hands, for as many years, in as many rooms like this, as Gephardt. Neither has anyone else in the potential 2004 field campaigned for as many Democratic candidates or carried water on Capitol Hill for as many of the key party interest groups, particularly organized labor.

Political connections

If Gephardt runs -- and he is considering it -- the depth and breadth of his connections likely would provide him with financial and organizational assets that exceed any of his potential rivals, except Gore.

And that could make Gephardt a more formidable competitor for the nomination than it appears today, especially if the Democrats retake the House this fall and give him a powerful platform as speaker.

Yet, to a degree, Gephardt's strengths are his weaknesses. His ties to the party's core constituencies are built largely on conventional liberal positions that could limit his appeal to moderate and upscale voters. And the same experience that makes him so familiar might make him look shopworn to average voters.

Different rhetorics

If Gephardt runs, his greatest hurdle might be to sell himself as a man with a vision, and not just a resume.

When Gephardt arrived in Washington, he was a centrist who frequently broke from the party line. In his first years, he voted for President Reagan's tax cuts and led a rebellion against President Carter's hospital cost-containment plan. After Walter F. Mondale's landslide 1984 defeat, Gephardt was one of the founding members of the Democratic Leadership Council, formed to tug the party back toward the center.

But in his 1988 presidential race, Gephardt veered left. While his hawkish rhetoric on trade was consistent with his record, Gephardt reversed several conservative positions. Instead, he presented himself as a prairie populist, bellowing "It's your fight too!" on the stump in Iowa.

After Gephardt's Iowa win in that campaign, his opponents ferociously accused him of flip-flopping on issues. Lacking the money to respond effectively, Gephardt was routed in primaries and soon was forced from the race.

The 1988 race was a turning point in his career. From that point, he has been much more closely allied with the party's liberal wing, and he is a frequent target of criticism from centrists.

Indeed, through the 1990s, Gephardt emerged as a liberal leader largely through opposition to some of President Clinton's priorities. Gephardt led the unsuccessful fight against Clinton's North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993, voted against welfare reform legislation Clinton signed in 1996 and joined few House Democrats in opposing the balanced-budget agreement Clinton negotiated with Congress in 1997.

Considering bid

As he slogs through the fourth attempt to retake the House from the GOP, Gephardt seriously is considering a presidential bid again. He has said that he will not decide whether to run until after November, but he has instructed his staff to lay the foundations for a possible campaign. Some around him believe it is more likely that he will run if the Democrats fail to recapture the House, but aides say, that even if his party does regain the majority, Gephardt might renounce the speakership or step down after a few months of holding it to seek the presidency.

With typical diligence, he makes calls every week to activists in the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Gephardt also appears to be trying to mend fences with centrist Democrats. He has spoken twice to the DLC, expressed support for welfare reform, backed action in Iraq and tried to reframe his trade position as a commitment to upholding labor and environmental standards abroad.

"Clearly the gap is narrowing," says Ed Kilgore, the DLC policy director. "He seems to have implicitly accepted much of the new Democratic argument from the 1990s -- not all, but much."