In a distrustful age, a presidential election is less about inspiration than mayhem: locating popular issues that divide the enemy camp and cast your opponent as a cultural extremist. Dole and his GOP allies attacked on three fronts last week. They ridiculed Clinton’s legal argument that he may be entitled to put off the Paula Jones sexual-harassment suit because he’s too busy being commander in chief. Then Dole assaulted the morality of the president’s veto of a ban on “partial-birth abortions.” And Republicans thought they had a sure winner in the gay-marriage issue. A tolerant Democrat, they surmised, wouldn’t support a pre-emptive strike on a right that not a single state has yet granted.
But so far, Dole’s cultural salvos have had no apparent effect: he trails Clinton by 17 points (52-35) in the new NEWSWEEK Poll. But the White House is taking no chances. Clinton was reminded of the potential power of the wedge in 1993 when, he recalled last week, he was “pilloried” for expanding gay rights in the military. So the president has since been careful to lecture Hollywood on smut and violence, demand that broadcasters support V-chip legislation, tout school uniforms in public schools and call on abortion-rights supporters to champion adoption.
He also knew he could say no to same-sex marriage. Though gays have poured millions into Clinton’s campaigns, the movement’s leaders understand the numbers: according to the NEWSWEEK Poll, only 33 percent of the country approves of the idea of same-sex marriage. Clinton aides maintained that the GOP was merely trying to lure the White House into defending the politically indefensible. And they made the classic argument: if you think we’re so bad, imagine how much you’d like President Dole.
The strategy worked. Gay-rights groups were bitter but relatively calm. “We have to keep our focus on the main goal,” said David Smith of the Human Rights Campaign, “and that is to re-elect Bill Clinton.” The move infuriated David Mixner, a longtime Clinton friend and gay activist in Hollywood. “It’s reprehensible and cowardly,” Mixner told NEWSWEEK. “But I won’t b.s. you. It was politically smart.” For Bill Clinton, that’s usually good enough.
