The question of judgment.

NEW YORK, APRIL 21

The frugality of Al Gore is the cause of much jocundity, and who is surprised? A donation to charity of $353 against a background of $200,000 in salary plus perks including Air Force Two is certainly enough to energize the jokesters. Jay Leno asked his audience whether it had seen the episode of ER the night before. "It was really good. The doctors used the jaws of life to try to open Al Gore's wallet to get a charitable donation. It was heartwrenching." The counterpoint came quickly, contrasting contributions to charity by President Clinton. "Why did you think he offered to sleep with Paula Jones? If that's not charity, what is?"

It's a tough world, but if you get to cruise around it with eight hundred attendants and a Marine band at every airport, you have to put up with being pinned down -- or will it now be suggested that gifts to charities, like extra-conjugal sex, are merely a matter of private concern? But pending this, how much you give to charity is right there under the public searchlight, and here is the problem that overshadows any concern over Mr. Gore's husbandry. It is the question of his utter, incredible political insensitivity.

An episode from the past. During the first campaign of General Eisenhower for President the potential scandal involving his running-mate's special fund for air fares from Washington to California brought on the famous Checkers speech. In that address, Mr. Nixon pleaded his poverty most poignantly and convincingly (but he would keep Checkers no matter what). At which point he performed the ecdysiast's final flourish: Here, he said. Here is -- in effect -- a copy of my income-tax return. Take it. Look at it.

In his hotel room, viewing the television performance, was candidate Dwight Eisenhower. The late Murray Kempton revealed that Eisenhower writhed in furious agony at what Nixon had done. By revealing his income-tax return, he had generated irresistible pressure on all the other candidates to do the same thing. Eisenhower paled at the thought of exposing his tax return -- because his contributions to charity were on the order of 75 cents to the Red Cross.

Kempton coached his readers on what one might call West Point culture. When between-the-wars West Pointers graduated as second lieutenants, married, and brought up children, they had to make do on the starvation wages then being paid to the lower ranks in the military forces. In the time it took for them to go from being second lieutenants to being five-star generals, economic habits had set in concrete. So here was General Eisenhower, relatively affluent, facing a public scrutiny of exiguous contributions to charity.

People at the Presidency-seeking level are supposed to show more sense. When Ike ran, he never expected that anyone would see his tax returns. Gore, on the other hand, should have anticipated the exposure. Students of character are drawn not so much to his stinginess as to his failure to anticipate the political consequences of revealing it.

Criticism of the same order can be directed against Mr. Clinton. The thinking is along the following lines:

Paula Jones has filed suit. . . . The Supreme Court has said we must go to trial. . . . In preparation for trial, Paula's lawyers are going to examine every blind date I ever had. . . . They will also depose me -- inevitable. . . . They'll ask me questions about Gennifer Flowers -- inevitable. . . . It makes sense to settle. No problem raising $700,000. The "apology" they want? Not good, but we can work up something and spin with it. I'll get two or three bad days after that happens, but -- it'll blow over, real fast.

A failure to analyze matters of political consequence involving one's own self-interest at the least suggests a potential weakness in the capacity to analyze successfully what is in the public interest. Al Gore owes 90 per cent of his high reputation to the sense of otherworldliness he emanates. It is easy and indeed fun to mock his immersion in wind, sand, and stars. But it is an immersion, in the Gore persona, that goes hand in hand with his immersion in the problems of -- the Village. And always the village has needs. The American people are very good about this, giving about $150 billion a year to charitable causes. Those Americans who make $200,000 are more or less expected to do their share. And there are terribly obvious ways to communicate one's displeasure, when dealing with presidential candidates, with those who don't do their share.