It was a scene that would become a favorite among aficionados of Al Gore's frequent but often under-reported verbal bloopers. On Sunday, January 17, 1993, just days before the
Clinton/Gore inauguration, the vice president- elect was touring Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home outside Charlottesville, Virginia. The visit was an important photo-op; Gore and Bill Clinton were about to start their showy retracing of the trip Jefferson took to Washington for his own inaugural in 1801.

Guided by Daniel Jordan, executive director of Monticello, Gore came upon a row of white marble busts. "Who are these people?" he asked. A little taken aback, Jordan hesitated and quietly answered. That's George Washington on the right, he said. And that's Benjamin Franklin. And Jefferson, too.

Gore had asked an almost breathtakingly stupid question, the kind that when uttered in public can result in a barrage of mocking reports in the press. But the soon-to-be vice president's comments didn't attract much coverage. In fact, only a handful of reporters--most notably Maureen Dowd of the New York Times--even mentioned it in their accounts of the pre-inauguration extravaganza.

Gore-watchers in the press would get many more opportunities to ignore vice presidential gaffes in the years to come. For example, in January 1994, during a speech in Milwaukee, Gore managed to praise American diversity while mangling the words of the Great Seal of the United States. Milwaukee's multi- ethnic society, Gore said, proves that America "can be e pluribus unum--out of one, many." (It wasn't the first time Gore had trouble with simple phrases; earlier, in a virtually unnoticed statement, he solemnly declared that a leopard cannot change its stripes.) And last year the vice president claimed that he and his wife Tipper were the real-life models for the star-crossed Ivy League couple in Erich Segal's Love Story--a statement that fell flat when the author himself challenged Gore's accuracy.

Now the vice president has done it again. In June, speaking shortly after the Chicago Bulls won yet another NBA championship, Gore marveled at the game's biggest star. "I tell you, that Michael Jackson is unbelievable, isn't he?" Gore said. "He's just unbelievable. Three plays in 20 seconds." It was a particularly piquant gaffe, appearing not only dumb but faintly racist as well. But again, Gore's Michael Jackson/Michael Jordan misstep attracted relatively little attention--at least when compared to the press coverage given the misstatements of Gore's predecessor.

Flash back to June 13, 1992. Dan Quayle, on the re-election campaign trail, visits an elementary school in Trenton, New Jersey. There, during a spelling exercise, he instructs a young student to add an "e" to "potato." The mistake spreads at the speed of light across newspapers, magazines, and television. " Quayle Opens Mouth, Inserts Toe," reads one typical headline.

Now compare that to Gore's Jordan/Jackson boner. A search of the Nexis database of newspapers and magazines turned up 270 references to the "potatoe" gaffe in the ten days after Quayle's visit to the New Jersey school. A similar search revealed 28 references to the "Michael Jackson/Jordan" story in the ten days after Gore's gaffe--and one of them was to report that Bob Dole had once made a similar mistake.

"I'm not surprised," says Rich Noyes, an analyst who has studied coverage of Gore and Quayle for the Center for Media and Public Affairs. Noyes says news reporting of Quayle's vice presidency was "consistently negative," but he points out that there really wasn't that much of it. "Quayle got the relatively minimal coverage that most vice presidents get," Noyes says. "He was not a fixture on the evening news, but he was a fixture on the late night comedy programs, which had as their common theme that he was stupid. Since there was so little coverage of him doing his job, the late-night caricature governed his image."

Things are vastly different with the current vice president, Noyes says. " Al Gore has gotten quite good press," he continues. "The Washington press corps sees him as brainy, progressive, committed to using technology to solve future problems." The worst that most reporters believe about Gore is that he is stiff and wooden, which is not a particularly disqualifying trait for a future president. So he gets the benefit of the doubt. "With Gore, a mistake is seen as a mistake," Noyes says. "The media just didn't see any news there."

If Noyes is correct, it will be virtually impossible for Gore to accumulate a reputation for foot-in-mouth disease--no matter how many times he actually inserts his foot in his mouth. Perhaps reporters will apply some heat when Gore's presidential campaign begins in earnest.   But don't bet on it. A leopard in the press jungle cannot change its stripes.