CAMPAIGN 2000

Unless or until Bob Dole gets moving, there will be only two interesting questions about Campaign '96: Can the Republicans keep control of the Congress, and will Al Gore or Jack Kemp show better in the game within the game--the race to be best positioned to strike for the top in 2000? Local factors, not presidential coattails, will largely govern the House and Senate contests, but Gore-Kemp is a national battle everyone can watch and measure.

The 1996 Veepstakes is only a backdrop. Gore and Kemp may face each other four years from now, but at this point the real race for both men is against potential rather than present enemies. "For us," says Democrat Bob Kerrey, speaking for those like Dick Gephardt and Chris Dodd who would deny Gore that chance, "how Al does this time will shape the race for next time--and the same is so with Jack for the other side." Why? "Money, mostly." For at least the next two years every person bitten by the presidential bug will be scrambling for political and financial support. By doing well this year, Kemp and Gore could make that numbing job even tougher for their rivals.

Kemp has the greater burden, but not because he and Dole may be buried in a landslide. In actively courting minority voters--a sideshow wholly separate from Dole's effort--Kemp has set himself against recent Republican history. "All too often in the past," Kemp said not long ago, Republicans have "had that Southern strategy that said we want to go after the white vote and had better not try to get black votes because it might lose those white votes. That is shameful." That it is. But Kemp's stance could cost him dearly in the 2000 primaries, where the increasingly conservative G.O.P. primary electorate dominates the nominating process. On the other hand, the prospect of two moderates, Kemp and Colin Powell, battling the likes of Pat Buchanan could make the 1960s struggle for the party's soul seem tame by comparison.

In their current face-off, Gore, surprisingly, is doing better than Kemp. The first test came during the two party conventions. Both men did well, "but Gore actually turned things around," says Frank Luntz, the G.O.P. pollster who used focus groups to analyze the various convention performances. "Before the conventions," says Luntz, "Kemp was preferred over Gore. After they spoke, Gore surged ahead, a reversal due entirely to Gore's home-run speech."

Few expected the wooden Gore to outshine the kinetic Kemp, but he did it again last Tuesday, when both men spoke to a group of Jewish leaders in New York. Kemp's pandering was so obvious that Gore, who had a partisan refutation in his pocket, instead delivered a statesmanlike talk boldly confirming the Administration's frustration with the anti-Palestinian policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who sat glumly only five feet away. The next crucial confrontation will come in the vice-presidential debate next month.

To borrow Nelson Rockefeller's words, no politician with an ego--which means all politicians--has ever wanted to be "vice president of anything." But being Veep is still the surest road to the top, which is why Gore-Kemp will be worth watching even if Clinton-Dole never rises beyond a boring done deal.