The rumor was that the presidency was at stake in Hartford’s Bushnell Theater. It was hard to tell. For 90 minutes, Clinton and Dole set forth their prescriptions for the future–and criticisms of each other–in a measured way that was inoffensive, uninspiring and rather dull: a leisurely open meeting of a collegial congressional subcommittee.
But Bob Dole needed to be something other than polite company. He had to dramatically turn the presidential race upside down.
He didn’t. He fitfully made his points, criticizing the president’s record on drugs, crime and taxes, and offering himself as a man of decency and compassion. Clinton more or less mailed in his own performance, answering Dole’s debating points dutifully, and with only rare hints of passion.
A draw was all that Clinton needed, and he got that–and more. According to the new NEWSWEEK Poll, the debate did nothing to change either the state of the race or voters’ views of either man. Before the debate, Clinton led Dole by 21 points (53 percent to 32 percent). He led by exactly the same margin afterward. Nearly half of those polled (49 percent) thought the president had won the debate, compared with only 25 percent who thought the former senator had triumphed.
Nothing in the debate changed the impression that Clinton was the more articulate man, and the more compassionate. Those polled tended to agree with Clinton’s positions on the economy, education, the deficit and health care. They strongly agreed with Dole on only one issue: his opposition to pardons for Clinton administration cronies caught up in scandal.
In the Bushnell Theater, Clinton and Dole struggled–with modest success–to stick to their scripts: Dole, the smiling hit man, Clinton, the mature, ““presidential’’ leader. All the talk of a ““surprise’’ aggressive move by Dole amounted to nothing in the end. Dole even forgot to attack Clinton as a ““liberal’’ until the debate was nearly over.
TO LOWER EXPECTATIONS AND make a virtue of necessity, the Dole campaign had advertised their man as a plain-speaking Gary Cooper up against the glib Slick Willie. But they wanted their man of few words to know in advance which few words he would utter, and how. Their candidate had a lifelong aversion to ““prep’’ of any kind. Still, they led him through an extraordinary 10 hours of practice before cameras, searching for the fine line between cheerfulness and political aggression. ““I had one word of advice: smile,’’ said GOP mediameister Mike Deaver. Unfortunately for Dole, he didn’t smile nearly enough. There were no sneers and few snide remarks, but only one broad grin in 90 minutes.
Dole did work through his talking points. Tony Fabrizio, his polltaker, had given Dole the checklist of themes: Clinton can’t be trusted to cut taxes, but Dole can; Clinton won’t be tough on drugs and crime, Dole will; Clinton says he’s now a conservative, Dole really is. ““Trust’’ was another issue the Dole camp wanted to hit hard. Late last week, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Dole campaign managed to sneak a spy into a Clinton focus group session in Virginia. Most of the questions, they discovered, were about whether voters found the president a believable figure. Dole bet that voters did not, and used the intel to aim his barbs on Sunday, arguing that he–not the president–would be a ““bridge to the truth.''
The president had claimed to be rusty and too busy with world problems to properly prepare. But when Mideast leaders were in Washington, he still found time to slip upstairs at the White House for debate work. He took a debate-prep invasion force to the quaint retreat at Chautauqua, in upstate New York: media men, ““oppo’’ reserchers, issue specialists on all possible topics.
CLINTON’S ADVISERS SET OUT three goals: to be upbeat about his accomplishments and plans for a second term; to keep answers short and to-the-point; and to avoid being goaded into anger by Dole. Mock debates amounted to a form of Primal Scream Therapy. Playing moderator Jim Lehrer, press secretary Mike McCurry bore down on Clinton with nasty questions about character and scandal. The president turned prickly, gave indignant and defensive answers–then practiced the calm and measured ones he was ready to deliver Sunday night. He didn’t really have to. Except for the Whitewater pardon gambit, Dole was oddly silent about scandals.
There wasn’t much drama in Hartford, and even less in the rest of the country. The basic shape of the race remained as it was. The nation has no great love for Clinton, but has yet to see any compelling reason to replace him with Dole. The mystery of the election season also remained: if, as Clinton has acknowledged, ““the era of big government is over,’’ how is a Democrat seemingly on his way to victory, perhaps sweeping enough to bring the Congress?
The chief answer is too obvious to suit pundits and spin doctors in search of profundity and high-concept. It’s the economy, stupid. ““We have never voted out an incumbent president who’s presided over four years of increasingly good economic news,’’ said polltaker Gordon Black. ““There’s no mystery in this; there’s been a real diminishment of economic anxiety.’’ Meanwhile, Clinton’s well-documented move to the ““center’’ focused on ““values’’ issues that have replaced economics as the voters’ urgent concerns: crime, education, drugs, health, kids.
So Dole was dealt a difficult hand despite the GOP’s quarter-century of virtual presidential dominance. Never a charismatic candidate, he’s been unable to sell himself as a realistic alternative. He had a successful convention, and his choice of Jack Kemp gave the ticket a brief lift, but nothing else seems to be working. His campaign–and debate strategy–follows the classical GOP theory from the ’80s: ““raise the stakes’’ ideologically, unmask your foe as a closet ““liberal’’ and then, finally, make the case for your man. But this is the ’90s, and the opponent is an incumbent all too well known to the American people. ““The idea that you’re going to suddenly reveal the “real’ Bill Clinton is ridiculous,’’ says Republican analyst Jude Wanniski, a longtime adviser to Kemp. ““Voters have already discounted for what they know about him.''
““Liberalism’’ is still a dirty word, but so, too is ““Gingrich.’’ Dole should have spent his debate time, Wanniski said, selling his own sense of decency and assuring voters that the speaker isn’t his real running mate. From exile, former Clinton polltaker Dick Morris agreed. ““Dole shouldn’t bother talking about Clinton. He needs to talk about himself. He doesn’t get it: there are ways to score without running right at the opposition.''
Instead, Dole is running straight at Clinton, but with an ever-changing set of plays. His handlers have disagreed over which themes to feature. He’s tried taxes, crime, drugs and ““liberalism,’’ but hasn’t pursued any of them with the kind of single-mindedness required to transfix or convince a skeptical electorate that isn’t very interested in the race to begin with. Dole’s handlers have even managed to ruin what had once been Dole’s excellent rapport with the press. Anxious to make sure his sound bites stay ““on message,’’ they’ve isolated him on his campaign plane, and robbed him of the freelancing wit that had been his trademark on Capitol Hill. There was precious little evidence of it on display in Hartford as Dole worked his way through his answers.
THE BOTTOM LINE IS A SET OF numbers that could hardly look better for Clinton, or worse for Dole. On the eve of the debate, according to the NEWSWEEK Poll, Clinton led Dole by his widest margin yet, 21 points. Voters were dubious about the likelihood that either man would keep his campaign promises, but more of them (39 percent) thought the president would than Dole (32 percent). It wasn’t an encouraging sign for a challenger who hopes voters will ultimately see him as the ““better man.’’ Clinton’s role as Empathizer-in-Chief is apparently paying off. Half of those polled say the president understands their concerns; only 31 percent say Dole does. Clinton’s convincing aura of concern has helped keep the gender gap wide. In most polls he still leads the challenger by more than 20 points among women.
The road from Hartford is now well marked. Dole is ready to begin the ““character comparison’’ phrase of his increasingly desperate campaign. Immediately after the debate, his handlers launched a new ““positive’’ ad on TV in key markets. The spot features Dole’s most convincing salesperson, Elizabeth Dole, reprising her appealing role at the convention. The campaign hasn’t used her until now on the theory that they had to drive up Clinton’s negatives first. Now the ““negatives’’ will be pursued in a massive radio buy, NEWSWEEK has learned. The Dole camp’s reluctance to discuss Whitewater and other scandals may be about to end. White House aides are bracing for the assault. ““It’s likely that it will be very negative,’’ says Clinton political director Doug Sosnick.
It’s not a matter that Clinton can afford to take lightly, no matter how far he’s ahead. Perhaps the most troublesome issue concerns the Republican FBI files that the Clinton White House requisitioned in 1993–a matter being carefully investigated by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr. Last week a former White House security aide testified that ““everyone in the office knew’’ about files that had been improperly obtained. Appearing at Pat Robertson’s law school, Starr said that he was making ““very substantial’’ progress on the matter.
STUDENTS OF HISTORY HAD SEVeral parallels to consider. Democrats hark back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR was the last Democratic president to win reelection. He did it in 1936, defeating another Kansan, Alf Landon. Republicans, increasingly bitter about Dole’s fading prospects, take a bizarre form of solace: they’re casting Bill Clinton as Richard Nixon. Nixon crushed George McGovern, only to see his presidency ruined by the scandal of Watergate.
Clinton and his campaign aides are evidently looking at yet a third parallel: Ronald Reagan’s 1984 ““Morning in America’’ reelection. On the eve of the Hartford debate they went up with a new ad, all optimism and uplift. ““We are safer, we are more secure, we are more prosperous,’’ the president says, as the screen scrolls through a list of accomplishments. After last Sunday night, it may not be morning in America. But for Bob Dole, it’s gettting very late in the day.
