VP Gore Is a Swell Boss

NOTE TO ROGER SIMON EDITORS: ROGER SIMON IS NOT WRITING A NEW COLUMN FOR RELEASE TOMORROW. THE FOLLOWING IS A "BEST OF" COLUMN ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN JUNE 1996 FOR YOUR USE. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION. -- CREATORS SYNDICATE

ROGER SIMON
FOR RELEASE: WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2009, AND THEREAFTER

Note to readers: The following column was first published in June 1996.
   
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The vice president of the United States stood in the doorway of his office shaking each of our hands as we entered, pleasantly pretending that he knew who on earth we were.
   
To the best of my knowledge, there are no reporters assigned to cover the vice president. As a result, few have ever bothered to visit the vice president's office in the West Wing of the White House. So let me sum it up for everybody: It's very nice.
   
It is large, with brown walls and beige carpeting, antique-looking couches and armchairs, and a fine, big desk, behind which stands a tall bookshelf. On the marble mantelpiece over the fireplace is an Eskimo carving, and there are landscapes and portraits on the walls. But dominating the room is a huge blow-up of a photograph of the Earth taken from outer space.
   
Al Gore walked over to a plush brown armchair under an oil painting of John Adams, our first vice president. "I'm sitting here," Gore said. "You sit anywhere you want."
   
I was tempted to walk over to his desk and sit behind it, but instead I joined my colleagues on the couch in front of Gore. We were a grab-bag of journalists: two editors from men's magazines, a lawyer from New York who wanted to start a magazine on fathering, Colman McCarthy -- a Washington Post columnist who frequently writes about ethics -- and me.
    
We all had received calls from the White House saying the vice president would like to talk to us about the subject of the family. "If you have questions on any other topic," one of his aides told me, "you can leave them at the door."
   
Well, what the heck, I figured, the family is a hot political issue this year anyway. According to a recent story in the Los Angeles Times, the Clinton-Gore campaign team has determined that married voters, especially those with children, are critical to their re-election.
   
No Democratic presidential candidate has carried a majority of married voters since 1964, but Bill Clinton leads in the polls with that group today. Which is why you have been hearing so much from him about school uniforms and v-chips and teen curfews .
   
"If the White House can break even with married people, then they win the election, no problem," says Martin P. Wattenberg, a political scientist at the University of California at Irvine.
   
And so Al Gore had gathered us together to talk to us about the American family, especially its most forgotten member: the father.
    
"Our society has undervalued the role of father and tended in the past to define families as mothers and children to a shocking degree," Gore said, occasionally sipping from a can of Diet Coke. "You can see the reasons why: Mothers are usually the primary caregivers, and we have tended to downplay and undervalue the nurturing role, the teaching role, the spiritual role (of the father).
   
"Even the phrase 'deadbeat dad' is defined almost entirely in economic terms. In fact, there are emotional deadbeat dads who are behind in their payments of devotion and love and attention."
     Gore said he wanted fathers (and mothers) to be able to tell their employers that sometimes they had to take off work to meet their children's teachers or take care of their kids' needs.
    
"I have a personal example that's probably a little embarrassing," Gore said and chuckled.
   
We all leaned forward.
   
"Last fall, I had a meeting (scheduled) with a visiting head of state in this office," Gore said. "And one of my daughters had a soccer game, and my wife was out of town making a speech on mental health, and I arranged my schedule so I could go to the game and be back in time for the meeting with the president of this country.
   
"Two problems came up: They went into overtime, and it was my turn to give the snacks out! Then it went into double overtime! True story! To make a long story short, you know, I'm thinking: diplomatic incident! The interpreter got a little workout, but this guy (the head of state) had children and was very courteous, and I just leveled with him."
   
So Gore made the president of this country wait, while his daughter played out the game and ate snacks with her teammates. "I felt I had the flexibility to take that risk with my work because I know how the president feels about it," Gore said.
    
Which is swell if you happen to be the vice president of the United States. But how many people are?
   
But, Gore says, he believes that "a very big change in our society" is about to happen to everyone.
   
"The social acceptance in the workplace of somebody saying, 'I'm sorry I'm a little bit late today, but my child had a meeting with a teacher that I had to go to,' will go way up," Gore promised. "And (bosses) will say: 'Oh, yeah. Great. I understand. I did the same thing last week. Yeah."
   
Well, maybe. But if somebody finds a boss like that, I'd like them to pass his or her name along to me.
   
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