The two celebrations in the American West that night foreshadow the fall campaign – and the generational themes that will suffuse it. The fun the world didn’t see was a ““pre-birthday’’ dinner at the vacation getaway of James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank. Clinton and the guests gathered at the piano to reprise the ’60s and ’70s: James Taylor, the Beatles’ ““A Little Help From My Friends.’’ At the Democratic convention next week, Clinton and Al Gore will be boomer dads, linked to the future by concern for the destiny of their kids in school and college.
In San Diego, it was finally Dole’s moment. Deeply tanned and vigorous, looking fit and ready for the fight, Dole survived in a venue he hates – the theater of grand television oratory. He delivered a stern but moving lecture on the value of his own longevity. He’d been granted a ““certain wisdom,’’ he said, by ““the gracious compensations of age.’’ Being 73 years old, he said, ““has its advantages’’ – like being able to recall a time when honesty, trust, family and sacrifice were words Americans lived by. He implicitly criticized both Clintons. ““I do not need the presidency,’’ he said, ““to make or refresh my soul.’’ Nor, in his day, did they believe that it takes ““a village to raise a child. It takes a family.''
By staking his future on his Kansas past, Dole bravely faced the issue of his age – and cleverly skipped over his entire career in Congress. But he had a larger, more daring purpose. In the last race of his long life, Dole, who sacrificed so much in The Last Good War, is running to restore a sense of values to a confused nation. It’s not all sacrifice, however: he’s also offering cold cash in the form of deep tax cuts. He’ll reassure his fellow seniors that he shares their concerns – even as he makes common cause with Generation Xers who share his disdain for baby-boomer self-indulgence. He’s the mature chairman of the board, supervising a team that includes Jack Kemp, Elizabeth Dole and, he hopes, Colin Powell, whom campaign aides have seriously considered offering a cabinet job before November.
Dole’s gamble worked, at least for now. According to the NEWSWEEK Poll, the GOP ticket got a healthy ““bounce’’ from the heady six-day stretch that began with the selection of Kemp and climaxed with Dole’s speech. In polling that ended on Aug. 10, the day before Kemp was chosen, Clinton had a 20-point lead over Dole (53 percent to 33 percent), with the Reform Party candidate trailing with 7 percent. By last Saturday, the GOP ticket had all but erased the gap: Clinton stood at 44 percent, Dole at 42 percent, the Reform candidate at 3 percent. Last weekend that candidate became Ross Perot, who defeated Dick Lamm by almost a 2-1 margin. Perot doesn’t have the numbers, but he still has his money and his sharp tongue. Meanwhile, Dole knew enough not to get excited about his rising numbers. ““Polls are polls,’’ he said.
Dole’s skepticism is justified. The numbers in all post-convention surveys are notoriously evanescent. They need to be read with caution. The Clinton campaign’s private numbers showed their man maintaining a double-digit lead, and the Democrats will probably get a bounce of their own after the Chicago convention.
The Democratic plans are elaborate and ““future oriented.’’ Clinton will wend his way to Chicago on a train called the 21st Century Express. Strategists have already dubbed the convention ““State of ion II.’’ ““There will be three months’ worth of news in four days,’’ said a top Democrat. Expect executive orders, legislative initiatives and reminders about the record. There will be plenty of New Age emotion as well. On what is being called the ““nonpolitical night,’’ NEWSWEEK has learned, Christopher Reeve and Sarah Brady are scheduled to appear. The overall theme: Republicans raise fears about Them, Democrats show concern for You.
The long-range Clinton script calls for a peace-and-prosperity incumbent’s campaign, touting his economic record – low inflation, low interest rates, more than 10 million new jobs in four years. In ads, meanwhile, Democrats will stir fears about the GOP Congress. Newt Gingrich, all but invisible in San Diego, will continue to star in opposition TV spots. In one being aired in a ““heavy buy’’ this week, shadowy figures of Dole and Gingrich are pictured together in an Oval Office dedicated to dismantling Medicare and gun control. ““Who will be there to stop them?’’ the ad asks ominously. Democrats will attack both Dole and Kemp for flip-flops: Dole on taxes, Kemp on immigration and affirmative action.
Republicans are ready to change the subject. Besides selling their tax cut, they will wield a series of ““wedge issues’’ designed to put the Democrats on the cultural defensive and divide Clinton’s base: immigration, the role of teachers unions, crime and, above all, drugs. It won’t be subtle. Through surrogates and allegedly ““independent’’ expenditure groups, they will try to tie stories about past drug use among White House aides to national concerns about narcotics. The implication: we’ve got to get Bill Clinton’s dissolute crowd out of the White House. ““That’s where they are vulnerable and they know it,’’ a top Dole aide said.
The GOP convention produced something novel: a three-way ticket. The Democrats now have to deal with Dole, Kemp and Elizabeth. Her Oprah-esque star turn on the convention floor was probably the most memorable moment in San Diego. Afterward, Clinton advisers privately confessed their awe – and concern. NEWSWEEK has learned that though Hillary Rodham Clinton will speak in Chicago, Mrs. Dole’s performance trumped plans for the First Lady to do a similar floor show. In the NEWSWEEK Poll, 42 percent of those interviewed said Elizabeth Dole is ““better suited’’ to the role of First Lady, compared with 28 percent for Mrs. Clinton. Mrs. Dole’s polish may help strengthen Dole’s generational message. Hillary is the combative product of the ’60s. Elizabeth is just as brainy and ambitious, but in San Diego she flawlessly played the old-fashioned role of the adoring wife.
If Elizabeth provided the adoration, Jack Kemp provided the energy. Kemp is 61, but Dole still views him as a Young Turk: as close to the baby boom as Dole wants to get. GOP strategists quickly decided to keep Dole and Kemp together on one plane, so they can get comfortable with each other – and so Dole aides can keep the garrulous and unpredictable Kemp in line. There’s another reason, top campaign aides say. Kemp has been a kind of human Geritol for Dole – if for no other reason than Dole won so much praise for picking him. Swing voters were mildly impressed, according to the NEWSWEEK Poll. Nearly a third said they were more likely to support Dole with Kemp at his side, compared with only 13 percent who said they were less likely to. Among those voters, 42 percent said the tax plan made them more likely to support the GOP; only 13 percent said the opposite.
Though Dole stressed traditional values in his speech, that theme will be left behind for now. Instead, Dole and Kemp will hammer the sunnier proposal of a 15 percent across-the-board cut in income-tax rates. ““We’re going to fire away on that,’’ said Dole campaign manager Scott Reed. ““We’ve got to burn it in.’’ It’s a debate the Clinton campaign is eager to join. Dole’s ““indiscriminate’’ tax cuts, the president said last weekend, would ““undercut Medicare, Medicaid, education and the environment.’’ Dole responded from the campaign trail within minutes. ““In his little radio address,’’ said Dole, Clinton was using ““scare tactics. He’s the only one who should be scared, because he’s going to have to leave the White House.''
But the same forces that are now giving Dole a lift may ultimately make him vulnerable. The Republicans have left their foes an opening by risking Kemp’s reputation as an honest, ““conviction politician.’’ Dole’s handlers were determined to run a smooth convention. ““The story you guys wanted to write in San Diego was “divisions between Dole and Kemp’,’’ said Scott Reed. ““We weren’t going to let that happen.’’ And Dole has bet his chances in California on allying himself with Gov. Pete Wilson’s call for an end to affirmative action and for a ban on public aid to illegal immigrants. Kemp opposed both until last week. He got on board – fast. In an interview with NEWSWEEK, he was unapologetic. ““I think it would have been offensive to say, “I’m on his team and this is my first disagreement and I’m sticking him in the ear with a sharp pencil’,’’ Kemp said. ““Politically, I had to say that Bob Dole has given me the opportunity to work with him. I told him he’s the quarterback.''
Dole has spent decades trying to shed his ““hatchet man’’ image. But by selecting Kemp, he may be forced to reprise his old role. Kemp won’t do it for him. The happy-talking ““Hubert Humphrey of the Right’’ made it clear that he will not do for Dole what Dole did for Gerald Ford in 1976. Kemp and Dole agreed on that two weeks ago, Kemp said. ““He and I discussed that,’’ Kemp told NEWSWEEK. ““I said, “You know, if you need an Agnew…’ And Dole said, “Jack, even before you ask, you are not my attack dog. I don’t want you to run that kind of campaign. I don’t want you in California running that type of campaign, or in New York running that type of campaign’.’’ So Dole will do it, as will GOP surrogates and free agents. Wild forces will freely roam. ““We can’t control Bob Dornan,’’ said Dole campaign strategist Jill Hanson, not sounding upset.
There is also a surprising lack of deep presidential-campaign experience on Dole’s team. The two men at the top, Reed and John Buckley, learned about national campaigns while working for Kemp in 1988. Though they are shrewd and successful so far, they are novices compared with the Clinton-Gore team. Broke and focused all spring on ensuring that San Diego was not ““another Houston,’’ the Dole team is organizationally far behind the White House. ““There’s no strategy in place, none,’’ says a Dole lieutenant.
If Dole wants to keep his momentum, he has to move quickly, and his aides have to think fast. The Dole and Clinton camps are limited by the rules. Each will have the same stack of chips, $74 million in public and private funds. In the hectic videogame of the general election, players must carefully decide which key states and ““media markets’’ to contest, which themes to stress in each and where to spend ““candidate time’’ and ad dollars. Reed professed a lack of concern. ““We’ve been running on fumes for months,’’ he said. ““Now I’ve got this big check in hand.''
But money won’t win it. Dole’s bounce notwithstanding, the Electoral College map is daunting to the GOP. Clinton maintains a strong lead in California, the largest and most important state. The Democrats have the edge in New England, New York and the Pacific Northwest, and are more than competitive in places that should by now be in the GOP column in the South. He has leads in the crucial ““battleground’’ states of the Midwest, including Illinois, Ohio and Michigan. Dole-Kemp can count on Texas, the Plains, most of the Deep South and Florida. The rest is hard going.
It’s a game of real choices – and clever hip fakes. Even if it withdraws from California in the end, the Dole campaign is determined to show it means business there. Kemp was born, reared and educated in the state, and began his AFL football career there. So some Dole aides argued that he should stay in the state after the convention. They were overruled. One explanation was said to be in the numbers. Internal campaign polls show that Kemp actually does more for the ticket in the big cities and suburbs of the Midwest. But the real reasons for the post-convention itinerary were more prosaic. Dole wanted to hit Springfield, Ill. – home of the Party of Lincoln. Having been nominated in San Diego, where he played for the Chargers, Kemp wanted to visit the other places he’d played football: Buffalo and Pittsburgh. ““Jack’s been traded a lot,’’ Dole joked. In each city the plan was for Kemp to don a team jersey with his old playing No. 15, a handy reminder of the tax-cut plan.
Dole’s final problem may be substance, what the handlers call the ““issues matrix.’’ In the NEWSWEEK Poll, voters list the economy and jobs, crime and drugs as their chief concerns. But Clinton-Gore narrowly leads Dole-Kemp among voters who list those as their main worries. Among those who care deeply about the environment, it’s a Democratic blowout. On national defense, the Republicans clearly lead. And Republicans are narrowly ahead among those who care most about immigration and abortion.
Of course, when voter-viewers really start to play close attention, issues and media buys may mean far less than the character of the candidates themselves. And this is the obvious but profound fact: Bill Clinton and Bob Dole symbol- ize two generations, and both evidently mean to do so. There’s never been a larger gap in age between the two major candidates.
Gone gray and turned 50 this week, the president will present himself as a man who is also acquiring the ““gracious compensations of age,’’ but who knows all too well the quotidian pressures of our times. He was to be feted last Sunday at Radio City Music hall, in a concert fund-raiser featuring his favorites: Smokey Robinson, Aretha Franklin, Carly Simon. Next week Clinton will unveil a new book, ““Between Hope and History,’’ full of earnest, wonkish proposals for government in the 21st century. ““Dole is too nostalgic,’’ said Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos. ““His speech was incredibly backward-looking.''
But maybe Dole’s on to something. Suspended somewhere between elegy and optimism, Dole hopes that his ““wisdom of age’’ appeal will somehow convince voters that he is ““A Better Man for a Better America.’’ In San Diego, he tried to make the case. ““To those who say it was never so that America has not been better, I say you’re wrong,’’ Dole declared. ““I know, because I was there. I have seen it. I remember.’’ Now, he said, he wants to ““be the bridge to an America that only the unknowing call myth.’’ By November, he will know whether that bridge leads him to the White House – or only to the Kansas of his own distant memory.
Behind Dole’s sunny tax-cutting message ia a tough “wedge issue” strategy aimed at solidifying his base–and picking off Clinton voters. Dole’s lineup:
As drug use soars, especially among young people, Dole will try to associate Clinton and young White House with a permissive culture.
Pushing for a hard-line approach, Dole will try to pit Reagan Democrats and blacks, who generally agree with strict controls, against Hispanics, who worry about being singled out.
Dole will use high rates to call for get-tough sentencing for young felons, tapping into a growing anxiety.
A winner in the polls, making English the nation’s official language gives Dole a popular cultural wedge.
By choosing Jack Kemp as his running mate Bob Dole unified his party, but now he has to keep the peace among a crew of advisers with clashing views. In some cases they have a longer history with Kemp than with the nominee. A guide to the players in the Dole-Kemp circle:
He’s Dole’s closest ally in the world of Washington lobbyists. He met Dole while working as a congressional liaison in the Nixon White House and has been giving him blunt advice ever since.
A Kansan who works on foreign policy for the campaign and ran the veep search, he came to Congress with Bob Dole in 1961. He was the best man when Dole and Elizabeth married.
He’s known Dole since they served in Congress in the ’60s. Rumsfeld served as Ford’s chief of staff. Now overseeing Dole’s domestic policy, he could be chief of staff again if they win.
She doesn’t make the decisions, but worries about them. A charming and effective campaigner, she’s held posts in six administrations and knows elected officials everywhere.
Like Ree, he is a veteran of Kemp’s 1988 campaign. The two are close friends. He’s a novelist and nephew of William F. Buckley and now oversees speeches and dealings with the press.
Both focused and laid back, Sipple is an expert at sharpening campaign themes for use in powerful advertising spots. He helped Pete Wilson win in California- and now must do the same for Dole.
A brilliant and hyperkinetic spin doctor and adman, he worked for Dole in his failed 1988 campaign. This year he ridiculed Dole while working for Alexander, but Dole knows he’s a valuable voice.
Dole’s most important and trusted campaign aide, he’s made all the right moves: urging Dole to leave the Senate, to adopt tax cuts and to sign up his own longtime friend Jack Kemp
A former Wall Street Journal editorial writer, he turned Jack Kemp on to supply-side economics in the 1970s and helped lure Steve Forbes into active politics
The “Book of Virtues” editor is Kemp’s cultural soul mate and partner at the Washington think tank Empower America. His message: it’s not just the economy, stupid.
An activist and expert on urban policy, Kemp sought his advice when Kemp was at HUD. Woodson praises Kemp for the Republican’s close ties to the black community.
