Word: dole
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...this point Bob Dole could use an act of God, because he is running out of time. A private poll by the Republican National Committee last week found that in the 19 biggest states not only is Dole trailing badly, but also his support is lower than Clinton's negative rating, meaning that even voters who can't stand the President can't bring themselves to support his opponent. Unemployment last week hit a seven-year low, people's confidence in the economy hit an eight-year high, and for the first time, a majority of voters credited Clinton...
...last, he tried to do so. All summer long, as his party allies snorted and pawed over a double-digit gap in the polls, Dole remained serene in his conviction that voters wouldn't start paying attention to politics until the traditional Labor Day launch of the general election. The nominee had told nearly every audience for months that he would burst upon the scene in September after a successful convention, with a popular vice-presidential candidate and a clear economic message. Best of all, he said, his cash-starved campaign would be revived by $62 million in federal funds...
With only two months to go before Election Day, Dole was finally ready--and the first thing he did was can Sipple. But this wasn't the "Old Dole," who is known for dumping aides when he hits a rough patch. Instead it was campaign manager Scott Reed, who had plotted for weeks to replace Sipple and retrieve control of the campaign's message machinery...
Enlisted in March after Dole fired his previous pollster and top strategist, Sipple and his sidekick, Mike Murphy, spent months planning ads, testing themes with focus groups, studying ad markets, trying out ideas. They worked down the hall from Reed at a company called New Century Media, a wholly separate operation whose sole client was Dole for President. The arrangement hid a basic disagreement that would eventually cause a problem: Who was in charge of message--the admen or the campaign managers...
...fight over who controlled the message masked a sharper debate over what Dole's message should be. Sipple & Co. wanted a clean shot: tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts. Reed argued that Sipple should sell a broader vision, the whole picnic of budget balancing and tax cuts and spending proposals that Dole laid out before the convention. Dole himself wanted to do the hard thing, offer not just the tax cuts but the specific plans to pay for them. When the ad finally aired, tax cuts were third on the list after spending cuts and a balanced budget, and Sipple...