* "Mr. Gore has tried to reinvent himself from a man of privilege into an average Joe. In an interview with the Des Moines Register, Mr. Gore criticized his only rival for the Democratic nomination, former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley. Mr. Gore, noting that he never played

professional basketball, portrayed himself as a regular American: 'My work experiences were a little less glamorous. I was a small- business person, a homebuilder. I lived on a farm. I was a

journalist for seven years. After I got out of college, I volunteered for the Army and went to Vietnam.'"

- Striving to reinvent Gore, Washington Times, March 21, 1999, By Cal Thomas

Al Gore Version 2.0: "Underdog" Al ... October, 1999

* "But the biggest surprise came on the Democratic side. Vice President Al Gore sought to reinvent his campaign by proclaiming himself the underdog, moving his headquarters from inside the Washington Beltway to Nashville, firing his pollster and challenging his lone rival, former Senator Bill Bradley, to debates."

- Wild Ride and a Wild Card In a Busy Campaign Week, The New York Times, October 4, 1999, By Richard L. Berke

Al Gore Version 3.0: "Alpha Male" ... November, 1999

* "Al Gore hired Ms. Wolf, who has written extensively on women and sexual power, as a $15,000-a-month consultant to help him with everything from his shift to earth tones to his efforts to break with Bill Clinton. '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,' write Time's Michael Duffy and Karen Tumulty. Of course, when a man has to pony up a fortune to a woman to teach him how to be a man, that definitely takes the edge off his top-dogginess."

- The Alpha-Beta Macarena, The New York Times, November 3, 1999, Maureen Dowd

Al Gore Version 4.0: The "crusading reformer" ... March, 2000

* "In his boldest attempt to junk his 'Washington insider' image and reinvent himself as a crusading reformer, Vice President Al Gore Monday called for a sweeping overhaul of the way federal election campaigns are financed."

- Gore calls for overhaul of the way federal election campaigns are financed, The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 28, 2000, By Dick Polman

Al Gore Version 5.0: Negative Al ... April, 2000

* "It is all part of a newly emerging strategy for Mr. Gore as he moves into what his advisers call the "compare and contrast" phase of the presidential campaign: compare his proposals with Mr. Bush and then "contrast" them. Translation: Mr. Gore rips his rival's proposals to shreds and presents his own as reasonable alternatives."

- Gore's Campaign, Confident on the Issues, Still Struggles with his Image, The New York Times, April 22, 2000, By Katherine Q. Seelye

* "Al Gore Version 6.0: A "thinking man with a heart" ... June, 2000

* "Gore's handlers are plotting yet another rollout of their candidate, this one a massive ad campaign based on the notion that he's not so much an alpha male as a thinking man with a heart."