Online NewsHour: Presidential Campaign So Far -- May 10, 1996

CAMPAIGN '96 - INCUMBENT FACE-OFF

MAY 10, 1996

TRANSCRIPT

With the front end loaded Republican primary's long over, the Presidential campaign has begun earlier than in past elections. As Margaret Warner reports, Bob Dole, campaigning from Capitol Hill to highlight his skills as a legislator, has had a shaky start against the well organized White House team.

MARGARET WARNER: It was a rather remarkable Wednesday afternoon in Washington as the two likely presidential nominees held dueling news conferences at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue. First, President Clinton offered the Republican Congress a deal. He'd agree to reduce the gas tax if they'd agree to raise the minimum wage.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: That is how we can break the log jam and then get on with the other crucial work at hand.
MARGARET WARNER: But Senate Majority Leader and rival candidate Bob Dole wasn't buying unless the deal also included a third measure fiercely opposed by organized labor.
SEN. BOB DOLE, Majority Leader: I'd just say the President will continue to send you common sense legislation, but it's very difficult when the President's own party ties up the Senate floor.
MARGARET WARNER: It was just another twist and turn in this unprecedented campaign between the White House Rose Garden and the Senate Rotunda. The spring of an election year usually finds the out of power party still trying to sort out who its nominee will be, but this year's front-loaded primary calendar helped Bob Dole wrap up his nomination early, and Dole decided to return to Capitol Hill and wage his campaign against the President from there.
VIN WEBER, Dole Campaign: Sen. Dole came back to run the Senate because that's who Sen. Dole is. He is the premier legislator, maybe of our time, certainly the premier Republican legislator of our time.
MARGARET WARNER: Former Congressman Vin Weber is co-chairman of Dole's campaign.
VIN WEBER: Sen. Dole doesn't have the capacity to spend a lot of money between now and the convention, and there were not really alternative strategies, and the best thing for him to do now is to be an effective leader in the Senate, while planning and strategizing for the fall campaign.
MARGARET WARNER: Ann Lewis, deputy manager of the Clinton campaign, says that decision by Dole fundamentally altered the dynamic of the race.
ANN LEWIS, Clinton Campaign: What you have is a contest between two incumbents. You have the incumbent President, President Clinton, and Sen. Dole, who's the incumbent of the congressional party.
MARGARET WARNER: With the party convention scheduled unusually late this year, the fall campaign will be unusually condensed, so the Clinton camp decided early on that the spring would take on special importance.
ANN LEWIS: I describe this as the campaign for public opinion. In the fall, we'll have the campaign for votes, but we won't have the votes to go out and turn out if we haven't won the campaign for public opinion in the spring.
MARGARET WARNER: The Clinton campaign seemed to get the early jump on Dole last month when Democrats surprised him with a push to raise the minimum wage.
VICE PRESIDENT GORE: Yesterday the Gingrich-Dole Congress formally said no to a 90 cent raise for the hardest working, hardest pressed American citizens.
MARGARET WARNER: With congressional Republicans divided over the issue, Dole had difficulty responding, so he tried to take his campaign outside the Senate with a series of tough rhetorical attacks on the President. On April 19th, in a speech to newspaper editors, Dole accused his rival of nominating liberal judges and being soft on crime.
SEN. BOB DOLE: If President Clinton has four more years and appoints just one more Justice to the Supreme Court, we would have the most liberal court since the Warren court of the 1960's.
MARGARET WARNER: But warned in advance about Dole's plans, the Clinton campaign was ready. Vice President Gore delivered a rebuttal to the same group of editors the afternoon before. Then just before Dole spoke, Clinton aides showed up with research papers for reporters that showed Sen. Dole had voted to confirm virtually all of Clinton's nominees to the federal bench, and the Democratic National Committee quickly provided this TV spot defending the President's record on crime.
ANNOUNCER: (Ad) A hundred thousand new police because President Clinton delivered. Dole and Gingrich vote no, want to repeal it.
MARGARET WARNER: This quick counter-punching reflects the campaign's determination to avoid the mistakes made by the Democrats' 1988 nominee, Michael Dukakis. Dukakis often let days elapse before responding to Republican charges. The Clinton camp's so-called rapid response operation is choreographed in a 9 AM conference call each day among senior officials at the White House, top campaign aides at the Clinton-Gore headquarters downtown, and party officials at the DMZ's office on Capitol Hill.
ANN LEWIS: With Sen. Dole as the likely nominee, his campaign in the last couple of weeks has set up a very negative series of attacks and criticisms of the President. Well, we believe strongly that if someone tells a lie about us, we are certainly going to tell the truth about them.
VIN WEBER: What the Democrats are doing is the only thing they can do. They are responding very tactically and narrowly to try to de-fuse those issues as much as they can.
MARGARET WARNER: How well would you say they're doing?
VIN WEBER: They're doing very well. Anybody that wouldn't acknowledge that the White House is executing very well these days, politically and otherwise, has to be keeping our eyes closed or something because they're doing a great job.
MARGARET WARNER: The low point for Dole came last Friday night when the Senator traveled to Long Island to deliver a long-planned speech attacking Bill Clinton's character and laying out his own reasons for seeking the presidency.
SEN. BOB DOLE: I want to be President so I can return integrity to our government, not a bad idea if you think about it, a little integrity goes a long, long way in America.
MARGARET WARNER: Dole's message was drowned out by all the media attention given comments made by his New York Chairman, Sen. Alfonse D'Amato. D'Amato had complained to reporters that House Speaker Newt Gingrich's extreme images and views were damaging Dole's candidacy. Over this past week, however, Republicans sense that Dole campaign might be recovering its footing. The issue giving Dole traction is his push to repeal a 4.3 cent gas tax increase enacted by President Clinton and the Democrats three years ago. Though Hill Democrats are resisting the rollback, President Clinton, as he made clear Wednesday, is now ready to sign the Republicans' bill. Still, Dole strategists worry about the President's built-in advantage. He can take bold executive action as he did last weekend with new steps to keep teenage welfare mothers at home and in school.
VIN WEBER: On any given day, the President can command the headlines and can command the attention.
MARGARET WARNER: Dole's advisers know that the situation is very different for a legislative leader.
VIN WEBER: I think there's an ongoing debate within the campaign and within the Republican Party more broadly about how much of this--the campaign's agenda should we attempt to define on the floor of the Congress of the United States, and my judgment is that at the end of the day, it's going to be decided that not much of it can be defined in the Congress of the United States because you can't control the outcome there, and you can't control the outcome even within your own party.
ANN LEWIS: Well, there is a real contrast right now between the President's record of taking executive action, making a difference, moving forward, and Sen. Dole, who's been trying to lead a Congress that frankly it seems to me right now would just rather take the rest of us over the cliff than move forward.
MARGARET WARNER: But if the next three months produce nothing but gridlock between the White House and Capitol Hill, no one can be sure which candidate voters will blame more.

Program
Support
From: