NO LONGER mild mannered and meek, Mr Al Gore, the vice president and likely heir apparent to President Clinton, emerged yesterday as the new Democratic attack dog, leading a frontline assault on the Republican presidential nominee, Mr Bob Dole, and the Speaker of the House, Mr Newt Gingrich.
While Mr Clinton takes a train trip to the Democratic National Convention that will renominate him for a second term, Mr Gore is the bright star in the convention city now.
Crowds anxiously wait for his appearances, thrusting out hands for him to grip as they scream "12 more years' - a wish for eight years of Mr Gore after a Clinton re election.
Over a 15 hour span from Sunday evening to yesterday morning, so many people jammed Gore events that the fire marshal stopped members of Congress, reporters and others from entering a pro Israel rally and a meeting of the New York delegation.
In his appearances, the often stiff and wooden Mr Gore seemed transformed into a new energetic gesturing "pol" as he ripped into Mr Dole and Mr Gingrich.
Mr Gore told a roaring rally of about 1,000 union workers that Mr Dole and Mr Gingrich were the virtual personification of evil, without even mentioning that the former Housing Secretary, Mr Jack Kemp, is Dole's running mate.
"With equal measures of ignorance and audacity this two headed monster of Dole and Gingrich has been launching an all out assault on decades of progress of behalf of working men and women," Mr Gore said to whoops of "12 more years".
"They want to drive you out of politics and they can't," he added. They want to silence your voices in elections."
At a downtown hotel yesterday, Mr Gore (48) gave Wisconsin delegates a taste again of the new Gore. "I want you to ask this question. What would Wisconsin face if the same extremist coalition, the Gingrich/Dole Congress, also controlled the executive branch?"
Noting that the next presidential term will probably see two or three Supreme Court justice nominations, he warned, "Their extremist agenda would come out of the Gingrich Congress, into and through the Dole White House, down through the Supreme Court."
Mr Dole's tax cut plans were called "a warmed over plan that failed and drove our economy into a ditch. We got burned once and we won't let that happen to our nation again."