Gore Emerges as Happy Warrior With Endless Attacks on GOP : Democrats: As the race heads into the homestretch, the vice presidential nominee has shaken off a stiff image and seems at ease in his current role.

BIDDEFORD, Me. — Al Gore is just hitting his stride.

“Do you want four more years of a read-my-lips recession?” he thunders with righteous indignation.

“No,” the crowd roars in unison, their boisterous reply bouncing off the walls of the cramped city hall auditorium, drowning out the torrential downpour outside.

“What about four more years of a phony education President?”

Again, the rabidly partisan mob answers with a lusty “Nooooo!”

“Four more years of a phony environmental President?”

They’re really worked up now, and so is Gore.

And when the Democratic vice presidential nominee finally asks his signature question, his hands chopping the air like a maestro, the crowd is happy to supply the answer: “It’s time for them to go!”

After several refrains, it’s also time for Gore to go, and the candidate lets loose with all he’s got.

“They’ve run out of vision! They’ve run out of energy! They’ve run out of proposals. They’ve run out of ideas! And with your help, ladies and gentlemen, they’ll be run out of office on Nov. 3!”

As the 1992 presidential campaign heads down the homestretch, Al Gore has emerged as the Democratic ticket’s attack dog, a role that the Tennessee senator clearly relishes.

Having shed much of his stiff image and wooden speaking style, Gore is coming across as a happy warrior as he delivers slashing attacks against “the Bush-Quayle Administration” for sins both foreign and domestic.

And why not?

As Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton’s running mate, Gore has largely escaped Republican attack and the intense questioning by the news media to which the other candidates have been subjected. That has left Gore free to take the offensive, often capitalizing on his foreign policy experience as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Several times on the campaign trail recently, Gore has come breathtakingly close to calling Bush a liar, particularly when Gore questioned the President’s steadfast denial that he had no knowledge of, much less involvement in, the arms-for-hostage deal known as the Iran-Contra affair, which rocked the Ronald Reagan Administration.

To be sure, Gore’s best-selling book, “Earth in the Balance,” has come under GOP attack, most notably from his campaign counterpart, Dan Quayle. The vice president calls Gore an environmental extremist whose policies would cause widespread joblessness across the land. But Gore received a large measure of political cover earlier this summer when William K. Reilly, President Bush’s administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, praised the book and said Gore is no environmental extremist.

Still, the Gore camp, like Clinton’s, is demonstrating that it will not stand by when attacked--not for a minute. For instance, after Quayle assailed Gore in North Carolina last week, alleging that Gore’s environmental policies would wipe out thousands of jobs, the senator’s press secretary, Marla Romash, responded even before reporters traveling with Gore had heard about Quayle’s attack.

In a tart statement issued under her own name and headlined, “Dan Quayle Can’t Add Any Better Than He Can Spell,” Romash accused the vice president of “distortions, lies and miscalculation.”

Such vitriol from the Gore campaign, though, has been rare.

Gore seems in a win-win situation.

If the Democratic ticket is elected, he becomes vice president--possibly for two terms, leaving him to run for the White House at a still relatively young age of 52. If the ticket goes down, Gore returns to the Senate--and could become the front-runner for his party’s nomination in 1996.

Gore seems so at ease with his current station in life that he even admitted without reservation that, at home, he is outflanked as an environmentalist by his own children. Yes, Gore acknowledged, sometimes his four children have to remind him to turn off the water while brushing his teeth.

Still, he isn’t so relaxed as to let his guard down entirely. Meeting last month with schoolchildren in Burlington, Vt., on the shores of Lake Champlain, Gore laughed heartily but passed when one child asked him if he could spell “potato.”

Gore’s appearance in Burlington underscored another reason for the good cheer among his entourage: As the campaign’s certified environmentalist, Gore has staged more than his share of events in beautiful locales.

Last week, for instance, the casually attired senator and his wife held an extended “town meeting” on the beach in Monterey, Calif. Two nights later, Al and Mary Elizabeth (Tipper) Gore were in Aspen, Colo., where they attended two fund-raisers. The next morning, before heading back to Washington, they went for a two-hour hike.

For all the chumminess between Gore and Clinton, cemented during their four bus trips together, they have distinctly different habits. Clinton is a notorious night owl who keeps an erratic schedule and usually begins running behind by early morning. Gore, on the other hand, pretty much adheres to his daily schedule, preferring to be in bed by 10 p.m. so he can be up early for an hourlong run.

Lately, though, the senator has been sidelined. He pulled a hamstring while jogging in Tyler, Tex., and began limping noticeably. Several days later, he developed a stiff back--from riding a stationary bicycle in his hotel suite.

“This happens to me every three or four years,” Gore said with a wince. “But I’ll be OK.”