No damage there. No fireworks, either. Nothing to change the trajectory of this weary, dreary race. Dole seemed to be a halfhearted gladiator, too decent (and, no doubt, wary) to be a very effective hatchet man and too limited a political performer to provide a very compelling alternative to Bill Clinton, who remains the smoothest of all possible cookies. The president was presidential, which was his first and only goal. He even wore a blue tie instead of the politician’s standard red (a clichE Dole honored). He said things like ““I bear some responsibility for’’ the drug problem and ““I signed the [you-name-it] bill…’’ and ““I vetoed’’ or ““I opposed [some Republican depredation, usually budgetary].’’ It was all very crisp, and focus-tested. Ever the political animal, the president understood that in 1996, success in politics lies in seeming as apolitical as possible.
He quietly relearned that lesson in the last month. The Clinton campaign had hit something of a rough patch in mid-September. ““It was nothing precipitous,’’ said a Clinton aide, ““but there are things that you can tell.’’ In other words: for about aa week, the race seemed to be tightening. And what was causing the problem? What was the president doing wrong? He was out doing the thing he supposedly does best: campaigning. After a slam-bang first week of September, firing cruise missiles at Saddam Hussein, Clinton spent the next two weeks on the hustings. He did some presidential things on the road. He threatened Saddam again. He did an environmental photo-op at the Grand Canyon (and commandeered a large chunk of southern Utah). But he also did some very political things, like attend a mega-snooty Hollywood fund-raiser at Barbra Streisand’s house. Mostly, though, it was standard political fare: energetic Clinton speeches, large and happy crowds, a bus trip, great visual images. He seemed to be doing just fine as a politician, and that was the problem. ““They like him best when he’s doing his job, being president,’’ the adviser said. And they don’t like politicians. Even ““good’’ ones.
So the president was quickly ushered back to the White House. By Sept. 23, when Dole started screaming ““liberal, liberal, liberal,’’ Clinton was responding from the Oval Office. And signing bills. And holding Mideast peace summits. And strengthening his lead again in the polls. It was an important lesson to be learned, a lesson that informed the Clinton debate strategy: the more presidential, the more successful.
Dole, unfortunately, has had no office, Oval or otherwise, to retreat to. Ever since he resigned his Senate seat in June–a move that seems utterly disastrous now–Bob Dole has been naked to the public, the thing they hate most: a full-time politician, and a fairly harsh one at that. His September contained some debate lessons, too, but they were subtle ones. In mid-month the Dole campaign managed its only successful strike at the president, a 30-second ad in which Clinton is seen grinning like an idiot and telling an MTV audience that he’d inhale marijuana ““if I could. I tried last time.’’ It was damaging–not so much because of the ““moral confusion’’ about drug use, but because of the fecklessness. It reilluminated the president’s most enduring liability: the notion that he’ll say or do anything to please (in other words, that he’s just a politician). The ad was effective because Clinton was doing it to himself. Dole wasn’t in it, wasn’t attacking him. ““The problem isn’t that Clinton’s so strong,’’ says Republican analyst William Kristol. ““It’s that Dole’s so amazingly weak. Instead of attacking Clinton, he needs to present a positive, plausible alternative.''
Clinton nearly had an MTV moment in the debate. Dole joked that his tax cut would apply to both moderator Jim Lehrer and the president. ““I need it,’’ Clinton cracked, amazingly. ““That’s the point,’’ Dole responded immediately. But that was about the closest Clinton came to being the gaggingly supine political creature of legend. Which left Dole with a lot of heavy lifting, the double burden of having to–respectfully–take apart Clinton’s record, while offering some sense he’d know where to take the country if elected president. He did neither well. No doubt, he was wary about seeming too harsh, but it all seemed just so… tired, especially his use of the L word (which may finally, happily, be fading as an American political epithet). As for the vision thing, there seemed some hope at the very end. He addressed his closing remarks to the youth of America. It was time to lay out a future, to show he had some idea what young people care about (and thereby shock the rest of us with his insight and eloquence). But no. It turned out to be an anti-drug rap. ““Just don’t do it,’’ he said. And as he said it, his eyes seemed to die a little. He knew it was a dumb line, a politician’s line, and so did everyone else.
