Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/072792/07279921.000

Text File | 1993-04-08 | 14KB | 265 lines

                                                                                THE CAMPAIGN, Page 28

Front and Center


Clinton surges into the lead with a flawless performance as
a petulant Perot bows out and the President goes fishing

By MICHAEL KRAMER


    It was like a Republican Convention. Everything worked.
The words were good. The television was good. The propaganda,
especially, was good -- in fact astonishingly good for a party
forced to accept a wrenching philosophical tug off its
traditional moorings. The also-rans, assigned supporting roles,
performed as if they were claiming the prize, with only the
habitually cranky Brown proffering a (predictable) sour note.

    The Democrats did it, and they were rewarded. The bounce
was theirs, the biggest in 50 years. But the Candidate has been a
front runner before, and he fully expects to be playing
catch-up again. So he smiled and went along and shared in the
wonder -- but the Candidate is a realist and he knows it. So he
said, quietly and almost to himself, "It won't be easy. Bush is
wrong about most things, but he was right when he said this is
a weird year."

    There was, however, one survey result Bill Clinton coveted
-- and he was truly pleased when he got it. According to his
campaign's own research, which has been famously rigorous and
appropriately pessimistic, the number of people willing to think
of Clinton as President has gone through the roof. That was the
week's goal, a "mission defined" and a "mission accomplished,"
to borrow the words of the man Clinton would replace. "It's
confirmed," Clinton was told last Friday. "We have our second
chance. The playing field has been leveled."

    Clinton's success in New York City was the product of
three carefully plotted moves. The first, the culmination of a
long and dictatorially controlled process, was the creation of
a platform that moves the Democratic Party unambiguously to the
political center. The second, the 14-min. biographical film that
preceded Clinton's acceptance speech, began the arduous task of
creating empathy for a candidate carrying enough political
baggage to fill a container ship. The third, the acceptance
address itself -- well crafted and eloquently delivered, if a
bit long -- was most significant for its contemptuous strikes at
Bush. Clinton's mocking disparagement of Bush's disdain for "the
vision thing" signaled the beginning of a bruising,
take-no-prisoners campaign whose outcome may be decided, in the
words of a Bush aide, with a low turnout of turned-off voters
who disgustedly choose the "least worst alternative."

    One of those alternatives vanished last week as Ross Perot
shut down his campaign with all the brutality of a plant
manager pink-slipping loyal workers at Christmas. His method
confirmed the worst assessments of his character. Without
warning, Perot stranded the millions who had poured themselves
into his effort, whom he had repeatedly promised to "serve"
selflessly if only they would follow his lead.

    Of the many reasons posited for Perot's decision, the most
laughable was Perot's "conclusion" that his continuation in the
race would throw the election into the House of Representatives,
thereby depriving the next President of the time required to
prepare for office. Oblivious to the stunned cries of betrayal,
Perot insisted, as he tiresomely does with every gesture, that
he was interested only in the good of the country. The most
probable explanation for Perot's reversal is simpler: he
couldn't take the heat. Politics is perhaps the only
professional game amateurs truly believe they can win. "Even
professionals who've been in the minor leagues all their lives
don't really appreciate what awaits them at the presidential
level," says Michael Dukakis, who has more than a nodding
acquaintance with the majors. As a nonprofessional, Perot
recoiled when reality intruded, a petulant autocrat who
apparently expected a grateful nation to crown him without
dissent.

    Bush and Clinton reacted like political ambulance chasers,
each inviting Pe rot's folks to "sign on" and offering
predictable theories for what it all meant. Bush's handlers said
Perot's exit helped the President most because a majority of
Perot followers were self-described white conservatives. Another
view, supported by last Friday's quickie polls, was that those
conservatives walked away from Bush's "failed, status quo"
presidency and will turn to Clinton as the only remaining
nonincumbent agent of change. This analysis (spun to negate the
Democrats' earlier hope that Bush and Perot would eventually
lock themselves in a death grip that would carry both over the
precipice) holds that Pe rot's followers were, like Clinton,
fiscal conservatives and social liberals.

    Strategists on both sides are more comfortable with the
known terrain of a two-man race. The Republicans see their
"electoral lock" triumphing again. "We're looking at a victory
resembling the coalition of states that has won for us in the
past," said Republican chairman Rich Bond, "the South, of
course, and most of the small Western states, with some good
showings in the Midwest and a few Northeastern pick-offs." The
Democrats concede the "cotton South" to Bush and admit that such
electoral-vote powerhouses as Florida and Texas will probably
remain with the G.O.P. But they believe that Al Gore will help
secure the border states and that Clinton will do almost as well
in the Northeast as Dukakis did in 1988. Both sides think
Washington, Oregon and Colorado will go for Clinton, and the
President's men concede privately that the biggest prize of all,
California, will probably be Clinton's. "It's lost," says a Bush
aide. "Gore appeals to the environmental wackos out there, and
the state's lousy economy is blamed on us. We'd need a big
recovery to get competitive there, and we're not going to get
it." The bottom line of this early speculation is familiar:
another election decided by small margins in the Rust Belt
bastions -- Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and Michigan.

    All of this assumes that blacks, who are not exactly
thrilled with Clinton, return to the Democrats in decent numbers
and that after the gutter balls are rolled both Bush and
Clinton are still standing as viable contenders on Nov. 3. As
each side began its effort to render this assumption bogus, the
strategies were on full display. "Clinton's speech was the road
map for us," said his aide, George Stephanopoulos. "The lines
of attack and defense are all there." Said a White House
official: "Bond has telegraphed almost everything we're going
to do. It's now a matter of execution."

    The Republicans will push against Clinton on three broad
fronts: character, record and ideology. Character has two
components. As currently scripted, the "dirty stuff" -- Gennifer
Flowers, draft evasion and the like -- will be recycled near the
end of the campaign, and then only if necessary. "Given the
Willie Horton backlash," says a Bush adviser, "we're going to
wait and see how bad it has to get." Character's second prong
sees Clinton as too eager to please and therefore too "soft" to
be President. "It's admittedly hard and probably impossible to
portray Bush as the change guy," says a White House assistant,
"so risk is our card: Yes, communism is dead, but there's a lot
of bad news around the world, and we want voters to consider the
risk they'll take with a novice as they warm to their desire for
change." But "to run with that effectively," retorts
Stephanopoulos, "you have to give it content, and that means
talking about Clinton-as-compromiser. We'll turn that into an
action/inaction argument, since Bush is seen as a paralyzed
domestic leader. Sure Clinton compromised; that's how he got
things done."

    Clinton believes his mere perseverance, the resolution and
stamina he demonstrated through six grueling months at the hands
of the tabloids and his primary opponents, is answer enough for
those who doubt his toughness. "In the end, though," says
Stephanopoulos, "we'll prove or disprove the proposition -- and
all the others too -- when we match up face to face." It is
impossible to overestimate the importance of the presidential
debates to Clinton, who does not shy from the Reagan analogy.
In 1980, with Jimmy Carter perceived as ineffectual, Reagan was
hobbled by the inchoate fear that he was a warmonger, a
lingering unease that persisted until Reagan deftly deflected
the charge in the debates as the hapless Carter looked on.
Clinton knows, similarly, that concerns about his character have
lodged in the collective consciousness and that they'll remain
there as time bombs until the electorate focuses seriously,
which he expects won't happen until he and Bush argue eye to
eye.

    "Clinton is the failed Governor of a small state who
couldn't move Arkansas above near-bottom rankings in everything
despite a legislature of his own party," says Bond, enunciating
the G.O.P.'s slash at Clinton's gubernatorial record. "Will
anyone want him to do for America what he's done for Arkansas?"
Stephanopoulos counters, "Will anyone not understand the Federal
Government's complicity in strangling the states' ability to
function? We've got tons of quotes from even Republican
Governors saying just that."

    The oldest of Republican attacks -- that any Democratic
candidate is, by ideological definition, a liberal big spender
is also in full flower. "Clinton has stolen our calls for
investment and entrepreneurship," says G.O.P. consultant Roger
Stone. "He's got the words, but the music is still all about big
government and higher taxes." That's right, concedes
Stephanopoulos, "but if you look closely -- and we'll make sure
that people do -- you'll see that we'll raise taxes on the
wealthy only, and we'll spend to rebuild the nation's
infrastructure, which anyone who isn't asleep knows needs
massive fixing."

    The Democrats' mantra can be understood in a single
sentence: "Everyone knows domestic policy bores Bush," says
Stephanopoulos, "so it's no wonder he's presiding over the worst
economy since Herbert Hoover." The Republicans are readying two
responses. "There will be a reform agenda soon," promises Bond
-- and to muddy perceptions it will likely incorporate much of
what Clinton has already put forward. "Steal shamelessly," says
a Bush aide. "Don't let the Democrats draw economic contrasts
unfavorable to us." The trouble here is that the Bush White
House has been laboring for almost a year to bring forth a
"reform agenda" acceptable to the Republicans' various factions.
The campaign's top echelon continues to believe that this
"problem" is "easier to fix" than Clinton's character weaknesses
-- but they have yet to fix it.

    The G.O.P.'s other defense involves gridlock. Bush's call
for a Republican Congress will be amplified. "We'll play to our
strength," says Bond. "In foreign policy, where the President
isn't thwarted by Congress, he has been brilliant. Give him a
Republican Congress, and there's nothing domestically he won't
be able to fix." How far this gambit is pushed depends on
Bush's standing in the polls. "We've urged the President to go
for broke," says a Bush strategist. "We think he should say,
`Either give me a Republican Congress or give the Democrat
Congress a Democrat President.' So far, though, the President
is nowhere near being ready to throw that kind of bomb."

    Of the few hot-button issues that truly roil the nation,
abortion is certain to get a full workout sooner or later.
Before Perot, the Republicans toyed with the idea of a "big
tent" platform -- language that would reiterate Bush's own
pro-life stance while welcoming pro-choice Republicans. When
Perot came along, the G.O.P. decided on an electoral strategy
emphasizing the party's hard-right base, and those thoughts were
stowed. Changing back would be "disastrous," says Roger Ailes,
the media magician who still advises Bush informally. Some
Republicans see the Democrats' "abortion on demand" platform as
ripe for ridicule because, as Bond says rightly, "a majority of
Americans favor some restrictions." But knocking the pro-choice
position frontally could further alienate those repulsed by the
G.O.P.'s tactics during the Clarence Thomas hearings. "And
besides," says Stephanopoulos, Clinton "defended against that
one pretty well in the acceptance speech when he slowed to a
crawl to say, `Hear me now: I am not pro-abortion; I am
pro-choice.' Let them trot out abortion. We can't wait."

    As the thrusts and parries commence and the Republicans
consider the President's long bomb -- give one of us at least
an undivided government -- the Democrats are dreaming of their
own October surprise. "Assume it's real close around Oct. 1,"
says a Clinton adviser. "The Supreme Court convenes, and Justice
Blackmun says he'll be leaving in January. Instantly the `one
Justice away' fear becomes a reality. I'm not saying anyone's
even whispered anything to Blackmun, but that'd be kind of a
neat kicker for our side, don't you think?"

    A dream, or a real possibility? For want of a better
metaphor, presidential politics is routinely described as a
game. It is not. Bush has said forthrightly that he will not
yield America's ultimate power willingly. In Clinton, the
Republicans face for the first time in years a challenger who
has already proved that he will not shrink from whatever it
takes to acquire it.