Now, Gore is appointing a government. Moderates get key foreign policy jobs. But attorney general goes to Harvard liberal Laurence Tribe. Friends of the Earth picks the interior secretary. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney is named secretary of labor.
Liberal groups are ecstatic.
Not on your life. Democrats are hobbled by several problems. First, their unity is undercut by their own center-right. One senator, Jesse Helms, was sufficient to block a normal appointment of Roger Gregory as the first black judge on the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Helm's Republican colleagues simply threatened a filibuster.