Lots of sniggers around Washington this week about how Vice-President Al Gore, as a "beta male", is being advised to take on the "alpha male" in the Oval Office if he wants to get elected president. But it's not so funny for the Vice-President. What candidates for the White House have to fear most of all is ridicule and this week Mr Gore is looking ridiculous.
The damage was done by an article in Time magazine which revealed that he has been secretly employing feminist writer Naomi Wolf as a consultant for $15,000 a month - more than he is paid himself.
The Gore campaign staff, most of whom don't know what she really does, is embarrassed. She apparently is advising Gore on what he should wear to appear more attractive to women and young voters. Brown and greenearth tones work better than charcoal grey suits and white shirts. But Ms Wolf is on to deeper stuff as well.
As Time puts it: "Democratic Party sources say it's Wolf who more than anyone else, has urged Gore to bare his teeth at the President he has served loyally for more than seven years. Wolf has argued internally that Gore is a `beta male' who needs to take on the `alpha male' in the Oval Office before the public will see him as the top dog."
It now emerges that Ms Wolf was in New Hampshire last week coaching Mr Gore for his first debate with Bill Bradley. We journalists had not noticed her sitting near the front of the hall. But now we have an explanation for Mr Gore's tigerish pounce on Mr Clinton with a question from the audience about cynicism towards politicians among the public.
It was the alpha-beta thing at work. But will it work?
The White House spokesman, Joe Lockhart, has had to fend off questions at his daily briefing about how President Clinton can help to get Mr Gore elected if "the alpha male has to defend himself against the attacks of the beta male".
Normally serious editorial writers find the subject irresistible. Under the heading "Alpha male worries", the Washington Post comments that "if Mr Gore were more confident about his purpose in running for president, he would not need magical elixirs. The fact that his campaign sought to conceal payments to Ms Wolf suggests that the candidate knows this as well."
The conservative Washington Times, under the heading "Alpha Gore", ridicules the Vice-President for his expensive "King of the Forest lessons" to turn himself into "a veritable political brute".
The paper deplores "the spectacle of a grown man pursuing the presidency of the United States by learning to flair his nostrils and paying through the nose to do it".
Mr Gore, who appeared dressed as the cartoon figure "UDog" at his recent Hallowe'en fancy dress party, is trying to laugh off the whole thing.
At a New York party this week, given by the society magazine publisher Tina Brown and her author husband, Harold Evans, Mr Gore instructed the guests how to turn around their chairs to hear and see him better. "That is how alpha males behave," he joked.
When he was asked on the programme This Week about what exactly Ms Wolf was doing for his campaign, an uncomfortable Mr Gore muttered about her advising him on "communications". She was also working with his daughter Karenna on attracting young women and men voters to his campaign.
He admitted he has not read Ms Wolf's controversial books with their explicit discussion of women's and men's sexuality. The trap here for Mr Gore is that the kind of advice Ms Wolf gives in her book Promiscuities on how adolescents should handle their sex drives without having full intercourse is not the kind of "family values" he preaches to the voters in rural Iowa and conservative New Hampshire.
Ms Wolf may urge women to "release their inner sluts" but presumably that is not the kind of advice she is paid for to get Mr Gore elected.
Ms Wolf gave unpaid advice to President Clinton to help get him elected in 1996. She advised the adviser to the President, the notorious Dick Morris, who got sacked when his affair with a call girl, whom he allowed to listen in on presidential telephone calls, was revealed by a tabloid newspaper.
Ms Wolf advised Mr Morris that America was looking for a "good father" in 1996, with family-friendly policies like school uniforms and simpler adoptions. Mr Clinton obliged and easily beat the grandfather figure of Bob Dole.
One person who is delighted to see Mr Gore turning into an alpha male is his wife, Tipper. "People say this is a new Al Gore but they don't get it," she said this week. "He's back to his old self. I said to him the other day: `It's good to see you again'."
She said that many people had forgotten the Gore that existed before he became the Vice-President in 1992. "Now he's like the man I knew before he started serving in the administration."
A Gore "insider" is quoted as saying "everybody's making a big deal out of that `alpha male' stuff. But how different is that from what we've been saying for months: that Gore has to emerge out of the shadow of the President and be his own candidate?"
Well, $15,000 a month is a difference. But the tough new manager of the Gore campaign, Ms Donna Brazile, has cut Ms Wolf's monthly fee to $5,000.