When the new Administration came to Washington last year, a lot of women started fantasizing about that big Bubba in the Oval Office. But since Al Gore Jr.'s ashtray-and image-shattering performance on
Late Show with David Letterman and his floor-mopping job with Ross Perot on
Larry King Live, the focus of attention seems to have shifted. Just check out the February 1994
Esquire magazine poll of Generation X women: A majority felt that the 46-year-old Veep would be "hotter in bed" than Clinton. (Hey, whatever happened to polls about healthcare reform?) Possessing what
The New York Times called "the wholesome looks of a soap opera doctor," part of the 6'2" Gore's Clark Kent-ish charm is that he doesn't know he's the modern woman's Superman. "Women swoon, and he doesn't even notice," an aide once said. "It almost makes you wonder how they got four children." Tipper, his wife of 24 years, has no doubts. "Absolutely pure animal magnetism," she thought when she first met him at a dance at a Washington prep school. In fact, women didn't chase Gore at college, says his Harvard roommate Tommy Lee Jones, because "they were all afraid of Tipper."
Lest we forget, brains burnish beauty. The former Tennessee senator is a best-selling author and info-bahn specialist whose cool command of facts and figures makes him, in the words of one friend, "the sexiest man on C-SPAN." And that, according to his boss, is what makes the package work. "Anybody who really knows him," President Clinton has said, "will tell you he's got an incredibly flexible mind." It's the intelligence, stupid.
