Clinton worried as well that Dole would launch a campaign of character assassination against him. He feared that the Republicans, desperate to catch up, would try to drag him down by harping on Whitewater and hinting at Clinton’s personal indiscretions. His advisers tried to reassure the president that voters didn’t care, that polls showed indifference to allegations of his past peccadilloes.
But Clinton was insistent. In early September he summoned pollster Mark Penn, who had succeeded Dick Morris as the main campaign strategist. The president was lining up golf balls on the White House putting green when Penn found him. Clinton told Penn that he had heard rumors that the Republicans were planning to launch a series of ads on character. Ordinary citizens would praise Dole as a war hero and a man of the people–damning the president, by inference, as a draft-dodging elitist. ““Kind of like Harry and Louise,’’ said Clinton. In 1994 Clinton had been infuriated by ads showing a fictional TV couple criticizing Hillary’s health-reform plan as a Big Government boondoggle. ““How should we respond?’’ asked Clinton.
PENN KNEW THAT CLINTON loved ads that showed real people talking about how his policies affected them. He thought it would be best to respond with testimonials extolling Clinton’s character. The spots should feature people with compelling stories that emphasized Clinton’s public achievements. Penn mentioned Jim Brady, the gun-control advocate who had been grievously wounded in the assassination attempt on President Reagan. Another appealing figure would be Marc Klaas, father of California murder victim Polly Klaas and a big supporter of Clinton’s crime bill.
““Hillary ought to hear this, too,’’ said Clinton. He walked Penn over to the White House pool, where the First Lady was resting in a cabana chair. Hillary was intrigued by Penn’s proposal, but skeptical. She had bad memories of Harry and Louise, but she wasn’t sure Jim Brady was the answer. Wouldn’t average Americans be better? Penn told the Clintons he would do some research and get back to them. Surveys of mallgoers, Penn’s favorite research technique, showed that Brady had enormous appeal, especially with swing voters. In October, Bill Knapp, the campaign’s chief ad maker, cut an ad called ““Forever.’’ The 30-second spot began with a chilling, slow-motion sequence of the 1981 attempt on Reagan. As the camera focused on Brady lying face down in a pool of his own blood, the voice-over began, ““It was over in a second, but the pain lasts forever.’’ In a halting voice, Brady praised Clinton for passing the Brady bill. ““When I hear people question the president’s character, I say, “Look what he’s done; look at the lives the Brady bill will save’.’’ The ad ended with a shot of Clinton striding past the columns of the White House with the words PROTECTING OUR VALUES emblazoned on the screen. The ad was put on the shelf, to be ready as soon as Dole launched any character attacks.
The Clintonites had another insurance policy. The campaign knew about the still-unpublished story detailing Dole’s extramarital affair from the late ’60s. When Clinton began his usual complaints about the press’s assaults on his character, George Stephanopoulos reminded him that the press was ready to unload on Dole. ““They have stuff on him,’’ Stephanopoulos told Clinton. ““And if he oversteps, they’ll run it.’’ The Clintonites surmised that the Post story was holding Dole in check. Dole had been careful so far to limit his attacks on Clinton to his public actions; he was avoiding any mention of Clinton’s personal life. ““That’s the reason they’re going so far to drive a Chinese wall between the public attacks and the personal stuff,’’ Stephanopoulos said. ““They know that if the wall cracks, they’re in big trouble.''
Indeed, Dole himself seemed to waver on whether to ““go negative.’’ One day he attacked; the next day he backed off. The irony was that the really effective negative campaigning had been done all along not by the Republicans but by the Democrats, with their ““Dolegingrich’’ Medicare ads. When Bob Ward’s mother complained to him that the Dole campaign was airing too many negative ads, Ward tried to point out that Clinton was running plenty of them, too. His mother replied, ““Yeah, but they don’t seem negative.''
Surveying his polling data in mid-September, Penn could see that Dole was actually making a little progress at warming up voters. Dole was becoming ““a likable old man,’’ said Knapp. ““We were concerned that he might trip over the line into becoming a likable, effective old man. Our goal was to prevent that.’’ Knapp designed a spot he called ““Dole Through the Ages.’’ It opened with pages flying off the calendar as the decades sped by in big red numbers across the bottom of the screen. ““Let’s go back in time,’’ said the announcer. ““The 1960s. Bob Dole’s in Congress.’’ Cut to a black-and-white shot of Dole wearing a skinny ’60s tie. AGAINST CREATING STUDENT LOANS is stamped across his forehead. As the decades speed by, Dole’s sins mount. AGAINST MEDICARE. AGAINST A HIGHER MINIMUM WAGE. AGAINST THE BRADY BILL TO FIGHT CRIME, even AGAINST VACCINES FOR CHILDREN. By 1995, he has acquired an evil twin, Newt Gingrich. Photos of ““Dolegingrich’’ float over the Capitol as the tinkly horror music swells. WRONG IN THE PAST. WRONG FOR OUR FUTURE flashes across the screen. Without any fanfare, Clinton’s team relentlessly drove home the message, as Knapp put it, that Dole was ““too old and too out of it to be president.''
FOR CLINTON, THE KEY TO THE last six weeks of the campaign was to remain ““presidential.’’ It was important for him to float above partisan wrangling, just as Dick Morris had counseled with his ““triangulation’’ strategy. The presidential debates threatened to drag the president back down into the arena. The risk was that Clinton, defensive and thin-skinned, would lash back or, more likely, engage Dole in a lawyerly and tendentious debate that would be at once demeaning and dull. Clinton’s debate prep, at the old summer colony in Chautauqua, N.Y., was designed above all to make Clinton remember that he was the president–and to act like one.
Clinton’s sparring partner was former Senate majority leader George Mitchell. As he came out of the Athenaeum Hotel in Chautauqua on the Friday after their first practice session, Clinton told reporters, ““He beat me like a drum.’’ At the time, reporters figured that Clinton was just spinning, trying to lower expectations. But in fact Mitchell had clobbered Clinton in the mock debate. In the role of Dole, Mitchell bored in on Clinton’s greatest vulnerabil- ity. ““The issue is trust,’’ Mitchell began. ““Where are the files? Will he pardon his friends and associates? How can you trust the president and his record?’’ Mitchell called Clinton ““an embarrassment to the presidency’’ and methodically ticked off his ethics problems. Clinton was unable to stay cool, even in practice. He became frustrated and testy. He would wallow in the details, delivering point-by-point rebuttals. At one point, he protested that Mitchell had an unfair advantage. ““Of course he’s done well, he’s got his notes in front of him,’’ the president spluttered. In the role of moderator, White House spokesman Mike McCurry adopted the sneering tone of journalists. Clinton got mad. ““That’s just the way the press sounds about these things,’’ he huffed, instead of answering the question.
CLINTON’S TRAINERS TRIED TO lighten things up. Paul Begala, a veteran of the ‘92 campaign, worked up a mock training schedule in the precise style of Erskine Bowles, the former deputy chief of staff who never tired of trying to impose order on the free-form Clinton White House: ““8:15 a.m.: undermine confidence. 9:30: nit-pick. 10:15: second-guess. 1:30 p.m.: overload with facts.’’ Charged with coming up with Morris-type mini-policy initiatives, Bruce Reed and Rahm Emanuel jokingly proposed a federal sock-matching registry aimed at eliminating the greatest household headache of soccer moms everywhere. The dorm humor finally had its effect. By the second night, Clinton wanted to stay up for hours after the mock debate, in order to practice staying calm.
Dole had always hated preparing for speeches and debates, and he was wary that Clinton, already a superior debater, would use his incumbency to advantage. It seemed to him that Clinton had brought along half the executive branch to his training camp in Chautauqua. On the first weekend of October, Dole had only his old Senate chief of staff, Sheila Burke, and a few aides in the Crystal Ball Room at the Sea View. ““Clinton’s up there with hundreds of the finest minds, and I’m here with you,’’ he snapped after reading accounts of Clinton’s extensive practice sessions. To play Clinton, the Dole campaign had drafted Sen. Fred Thompson, the former prosecutor and movie actor. (Typically, the campaign kept Thompson waiting an hour and a half at the airport.) In rehearsal, Dole kept wandering off the subject and exceeding the time limit. Nelson Warfield, who was playing moderator, would anxiously interrupt, ““Thank you, Senator.’’ Dole practiced for 10 hours over two days, but never for the full 90 minutes allotted for the debate, and he refused to watch tapes of his performance. Worried about Dole’s snappish streak, his advisers encouraged him to relax. ““Your smile looks great, Bob!’’ gushed Elizabeth. To keep Dole smiling at the debate, she planned to sit beside Sen. John McCain, who also had a famously big grin. To distract President Clinton, the campaign gave a prime seat to Billy Dale, the former head of the White House Travel Office and now an embittered witness in congressional probes. It was a devilish taunt with a major flaw: Clinton had no idea what Dale looked like.
Shortly before 9 p.m. on Sunday, in a curtained-off room at the Hartford Civic Center, Dole’s top aides and senior ““surrogates’’–governors and other notables who would be launched into ““spin alley’’ after the debate–sat stiffly in armchairs before six TV sets. Scott Reed sat behind a table with three telephones. He looked pale and nervous, as if he might be sick. ““He’s out of his mind,’’ said another aide. ““Outta his mind.’’ Most of the men in the room doffed their jackets. Reed kept his on. There was absolute silence until Dole started cracking jokes, making even Reed smile. The campaign manager leaned back and took a swig of Poland Spring water. Dole’s advisers tried not to notice the images on the split screen: as Dole spoke, Clinton looked amused. As Clinton spoke, Dole appeared to scowl.
AT 10:15, WITH 15 MINUTES REMAINING, the aides started distributing the basic spin to the surrogates. Clinton was ““uptight and on the defensive’’; Dole was ““relaxed and humorous.’’ As the instant analysis began, NBC’s Tim Russert declared that this was a Bob Dole many people had not seen before. ““Yes!’’ exclaimed an aide. But another confessed soberly: ““I don’t think we popped him enough.’'
Dole was scheduled to take a victory lap through New Jersey the next day on a bus. The portents were not good. Somebody had forgotten to bring Dole’s specially fitted lectern on the press plane (affectionately dubbed ““Bullship’’). In Red Bank, Dole pointed out that he had voted 13,836 times in Congress, thereby helping the Clinton campaign portray him as an aging Washington insider. That night Dole headed back to New York City for a fund-raiser. His motorcade, which Dole described as looking like a ““funeral procession,’’ arrived at the Lincoln Tunnel at rush hour, tying up traffic for miles. As Dole’s bus motored past stranded commuters, several gave him the finger.
Dole usually shrugged off such embarrassments, but he was tired and cranky when he returned to headquarters the next day. He thought he had won the debate–everyone had told him so–yet the crowds and energy were lacking. He announced that he wanted to bring in some experts to help find the ““silver bullet’’ that would help win the campaign. He had hammered drugs and taxes, he had denounced Clinton as a ““liberal,’’ but nothing seemed to be catching on.
There was an awkward pause around the table. ““Look, Senator,’’ said Paul Manafort, the campaign strategist, ““there is no silver bullet.’’ Dole looked at him. It was early October, he had been campaigning for more than a year, less than a month remained until Election Day–and no one could see a winning scenario. Dole was not angry. He was, in a rare moment of openness, realistic about his fate. ““It sure would have been nicer to run against this guy in ‘94,’’ he said with a sigh. ““I guess I missed my moment.’'
YET THE NEXT DAY, DOLE DID GET some good news. The campaign learned that the Post had decided not to run the story about the old affair. At least now Dole could talk to reporters again. John Buckley had not allowed him to do a lengthy interview with a major news organization since mid-September for fear that he would be asked about that subject. Dole also felt freer to attack Clinton’s character. True, Dole still had to be careful not to make an issue of Clinton’s private life. A Post editorial had made a distinction between character attacks that involved public ethics and the candidate’s personal affairs. The campaign knew it had to stay on the right side of that line or risk provoking the Post into running its story. There was tremendous consternation in the campaign when Bill Bennett hit the trail on Oct. 11 and began talking about how he wouldn’t mention personal issues like ““philandering,’’ while doing just that. ““This was so incredibly dangerous,’’ said an aide. Bennett, he said, was unwittingly ““playing with nitroglycerin.’’ The campaign hastily went on background with reporters to assure them that Bennett had been speaking for himself. Scott Reed leaked a campaign memo on ““the character issue,’’ making it clear that ““personal issues’’ were out of bounds.
The memo also made clear, however, that the Dole campaign intended to accent the negative from here on out. The decision to take a tougher line helped resolve the geographical debate that had been roiling the campaign since early September. Dole had cratered in the East, where the soccer moms had apparently opted for Clinton. But in California, Dole seemed to be closing the gap a little. Two polls showed him down by only 10 points. Manafort wanted to make a concerted run at California, hitting the wedge issues of immigration and affirmative action.
Going after California was bold but risky. It was probably too late to mount an effective campaign, and Dole would surely have to play rough. John Buckley begged his colleagues not to make Dole’s ““last mission’’ look like a racist attack. ““It would mean us losing ugly,’’ said Buckley. California, he said, ““is the biggest, shiniest piece of fool’s gold in history.''
On the morning of Saturday, Oct. 12, Manafort and the campaign staff presented the California strategy to Dole.
““Where are we in Ohio?’’ Dole asked.
““Eighteen points down,’’ said pollster Tony Fabrizio.
““Can’t be,’’ said Dole. He had just returned from a two-day bus tour of Ohio, and seen the cheering crowds. The foolishness of the whole exercise struck him. ““Why did I just spend two days on a bus tour of Ohio if you’re planning to pull the plug on it?''
His aides anxiously tried to get Dole focused on the California strategy. But the candidate wasn’t buying. ““Gotta play in Ohio,’’ he said. No Republican had ever won the White House without win- ning Ohio.
The boundless enthusiasm of Jack Kemp had provided Dole with a much-needed lift in San Diego, and given all the Republicans a shot of optimism. But by October, Kemp merely seemed tiresome to some of Dole’s advisers. The vice presidential nominee believed that no voters were out of reach. Eager to make African-Americans appreciate the virtues of the free-market economy, Kemp courted voters in Harlem and at a housing project in Memphis, Tenn. ““We’re gonna win 25 percent of the black vote,’’ he insisted to Tony Fabrizio. ““If that’s true,’’ the pollster replied, ““then this race is over.''
The Dole campaign did not have high hopes for Kemp’s debate against Vice President Al Gore, who was stiff but smart and disciplined. Normally, handlers watching a debate backstage in the holding room convince themselves that their man has won, or at least done a credible job. The scene backstage in St. Petersburg on the night of Oct. 9 was a little more realistic.
As the debate began, Haley Barbour, the chairman of the Republican Party, said to Ed Feulner, ““Hey, Ed, you’re Kemp’s right-hand man. Don’t you think Kemp would approve if you kept one of these TVs on the Braves game with the sound off?’’ Eight minutes into the debate Barbour yawned over Gore’s robotic answers. ““Jesus, an hour and a half more of this,’’ he muttered. When Kemp floundered on a foreign-policy question, Barbour sighed and swore. When it was over, the party chief said to no one in particular, ““I told you we should have kept the ball game on one channel.’’ Kemp had broken out in a Nixonian sweat under the glare of the lights and at one point had even been buzzed by a fly. When he saw Feulner backstage after the debate, he said, ““I never want to do that again.''
THE SECOND DEBATE BETWEEN Bill Clinton and Bob Dole had been over for 40 minutes, but the president was still talking to the questioners. He discussed health-care reform with a cardiologist, welfare reform with a young man, policy issues large and small with anyone who didn’t get to ask his or her question during the hour and a half on camera. Clinton listened intently, smiled earnestly, empathized deeply. He gave them the famous handshake, gripping their sweaty palms with his big right paw, cradling their elbows with his left. He bathed them all in the full, profound and soulful attention of the president of the United States. Some of the citizens invited to the ““town hall’’ debate looked like they were about ready to head home. But Clinton was not about to let go, not until he had answered every question, won each and every vote.
Backstage, Bob Dole fumed. He had fled the stage after a few grip-and-grins and now half-listened to his handlers pretend that he had won the debate. He wanted to go to a campaign rally, but he was stuck. By the protocol arranged with the Presidential Debate Commission, the president’s motorcade left first. Dole needed permission to leave.
Finally, Clinton wandered backstage, to a burst of applause from his aides. Like a schoolboy seeking affirmation, he asked, ““Did I do OK? I couldn’t really tell out there.’’ Pollster Mark Penn handed the president the results of his quickie poll rating the candidates’ answers to each question in the debate. Clinton had won all 20, most by wide margins.
CLINTON WOULD NEVER BE SATISFIED until the last vote was counted, but everyone else in his entourage was in a state of rapture. Remembering the camaraderie of the old ““war room,’’ veterans of the ‘92 campaign–Stephanopoulos, Paul Begala and James Carville–were schoolyard cocky. Straddling chairs turned backward before a row of TV sets, they had high-fived, fist-pumped and whooped throughout the 90 minutes. More refined Friends of Bill like Erskine Bowles and superlawyer Vernon Jordan kept up dignity acts, and other aides tried to maintain a suitable White House hush, but no one could believe their good fortune. The audience–undecided voters selected by The Gallup Organization–had lobbed softballs. A young man asked the president to elaborate on his plans to expand the Family and Medical Leave Act, Clinton’s most popular piece of legislation. Carville leaped out of his chair and started doing an end-zone dance. ““Did Gallup pick this audience? Or was it Central Casting?’’ asked speech coach Michael Sheehan. As Dole drifted aimlessly from updating the baseball score to trying to explain the difference between Medicare ““cuts’’ and reducing the rate of growth, Stephanopoulos muttered, ““He’s speaking Chinese.’’ ““Yeah,’’ said adman Bob Squier, ““really bad Chinese.’’ With 15 minutes to go, Stephanopoulos jumped up to head for the spin room. ““That’s it,’’ he crowed. ““It’s over.’'
During prep sessions, speech coach Sheehan had urged Clinton to ““dominate the space’’ on the stage. Clinton repeatedly and deliberately stepped out from behind his podium, claiming the no man’s land between the two lecterns. To the camera, it appeared that Clinton was peering benevolently over Dole’s shoulder, winking at the audience with an ““I’ll straighten this out for you folks in just a second, as soon as he’s done fussin’ ’’ nonchalance. At one point, Clinton leaned jauntily against the podium with his ankles crossed, as though he were waiting for a cold one to come sliding down the bar.
The insouciance was carefully rehearsed. ““Dole wants you to lose your temper,’’ Mark Penn wrote in a memo to Clinton during debate prep. ““He wants you to be drawn into the mud. These are the only ways he can touch the president of the United States. He may not even attack you; he just wants to get you mad.’’ There was very little left to chance in any of the debates. Gore’s most clever zinger in the vice presidential encounter had come in response to Kemp’s boast that ““trickle down’’ economics in the Dole-Kemp administration would seem like ““Niagara Falls.’’ Gore shot back, ““The problem with your plan is, it would put the American economy in a barrel and send it over the falls.’’ It was totally canned; the Niagara line, a favorite of Kemp’s, had been anticipated. Backstage, Gore’s staffers chanted along with the vice president as he uttered his ““spontaneous’’ remark. (Other prepared Gore lines the American people didn’t get to hear included a response to Kemp’s familiar boast about ““growing the pie’’: ““The problem with your scheme to grow the pie is that it’s full of half-baked ideas that will leave the American people with crumbs.’')
The election was starting to look like a sure thing, even to the candidates. Pumped up after trouncing Kemp, Gore exulted to his young chief of staff, Ron Klain, ““Am I in great shape or what?’’ It was their running gag line. Klain told his boss, ““If we lose this election, we’re the stupidest people in American political history.''
Clinton tried not to crow. He liked what Stephanopoulos called the ““gold-watch strategy’’: heap praise on Dole for his years of service and let the voters figure out that he had served long enough. Clinton continued to marvel at Dole’s ineptitude at campaigning. After the second debate, Clinton stood in the hallway with political director Doug Sosnick, quietly critiquing Dole’s flawed performance. The president thought Dole was ““clever’’ to introduce the character issue in his opening statement, but he couldn’t understand why Dole had failed to sustain a more coherent argument. ““It just kept coming out in little bits. That makes it harder to follow,’’ explained Clinton, as if he were teaching a class.
THE PROSPECT OF A LANDSLIDE created a strategic dilemma for the Clinton campaign: was it time to share the wealth and spare a few million dollars to buy ads for struggling congressional candidates? Leon Panetta and Doug Sosnick, loyal veterans of the House, wanted to, but they were practically shouted down by the consultants. Clinton had already done enough to help the Democrats, they argued; better not remind voters of the Democratic-controlled Congress so resoundingly rejected in 1994. Clinton wanted to keep the money for his own campaign, but he was obviously eager to see the Democrats win back Congress. He wanted to do something other than cast vetoes in his second term, and he was more than a little worried about Republican-controlled investigating committees.
The fear of scandal had always hung over the Clinton campaign, and charges of shady political fund raising from foreign interests threatened to open a whole new front after the election. But the dread that had once gripped Clinton’s aides had worn off. A few days after the debate, George Stephanopoulos was sifting through his in-box when he gave a yelp. He pulled out a subpoena from Congressman Clinger’s House subcommittee. ““I don’t believe this,’’ he said, laughing. ““Now it’s subpoena by in-basket.’’ He passed off the subpoena–his 20th or so, he wasn’t sure–to his assistant. ““When I got my first subpoena in March 1994, I was heartbroken, nauseated,’’ he allowed. ““Now it’s no big deal. This just shows you can get used to anything.''
