Tipper in Bangor

Kudos to the Maine Democratic Party. Their excellent choice as keynote speaker for their annual Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner, held in Bangor this year on Oct. 23, will be Tipper Gore.

Called a “cultural terrorist” by none other than the late Frank Zappa (who wrote songs like “My Guitar wants to kill your Momma”), Ms. Gore helped organize the Parents Music Resource Center, a group that focused the public’s attention on the increasingly violent and misogynist lyrics in some forms of popular music. Universally blasted by musicians and artists of all persuasions, this group worked with the music industry to place parental advisory labels similar to movie ratings on CDs and tapes. These labels now allow parents to have some idea of the type (if not quality) of the lyrics when the music is unfamiliar and often indecipherable.

Contrary to the polls and focus groups of the present administration, Ms. Gore identified a problem, brought it to an initially unreceptive public, withstood the initial harangue from First Amendment ideologues and helped develop a workable and productive solution. In essence, she provided leadership.

Her husband, Al, the self-described inventor of the Internet, could learn something from his wife. Finding himself behind former Sen. Bill Bradley in New Hampshire polls, the vice president has decided to return to his roots and move his campaign headquarters to his home state of Tennessee. Never mind that he grew up in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Washington, D.C. while his father, the late Albert Gore Sr. was a senator, the vice-president believes any separation from his boss, even one as staged and artificial as this, will dilute the effect of Clinton exhaustion on his sputtering campaign.

There are other methods the vice president might use to distinguish himself from the president. He could use his lifetime of knowledge about how Washington works to build political consensus. He could avoid promising to solve all the nation’s problems through federal spending. He could bring integrity back to the Democratic Party.

He could also borrow his wife’s approach to leadership. Don’t tell us what we care about. Tell us what you care about, tell us why, and then work with those most interested to develop smart, cost-effective solutions. And, unlike your boss, don’t humiliate your wife — listen to her. She’s pretty sharp.