Word: dole
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LESSON NO. 1: IF A STORY HURTS, CUT IT OFF FAST. Dole's tobacco debacle recalls another hapless Republican 20 years ago--President Gerald Ford, who during a 1976 debate with challenger Jimmy Carter denied that Eastern Europe was dominated by the Soviet Union. Ford's campaign manager, James Baker, wanted to immediately correct the mistake, but Ford stubbornly refused--and was hammered for it endlessly. So too Dole, who first remarked in mid-June that cigarettes were not necessarily addictive for all smokers. Instead of correcting himself, as top staff members urged, he dug in deeper, setting himself...
Clinton has been consistent on the subject of kids and smoking--he wants to restrict cartoonish ads, pressure businesses to do away with cigarette machines and classify nicotine as a drug that is subject to federal regulation, all of which Dole opposes. "What I seek to highlight is the difference in our policies," Clinton said last week...
Even so, there's more than a little hypocrisy to the taunting of Dole. Until recently, Democrats were just as dependent on tobacco money as Republicans. The second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, Wendell Ford of Kentucky, has reaped $76,057 since 1986, while House minority leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri has received $67,258. The industry's contributions to both parties was fairly even until 1992 when, the Center for Responsive Politics reports, Republicans got twice as much soft money from tobacco interests as Democrats: $1.9 million to $900,000. That gap widened in 1994, when Republicans raked...
LESSON NO. 2: IF THERE'S BAD NEWS LURKING, LET IT OUT YOURSELF. Like Dole, the White House has had trouble containing its most damaging story. In the FBI-file scandal, by failing to explain who hired Livingstone and by failing to release the delicious fact that Livingstone was a Chicken George co-conspirator in 1992, the White House handed the Republicans an extra week of controversy. "I know, dump it all out fast and make it go away," says press secretary Mike McCurry. "But they're not letting this go away. If we had got the facts out quickly...
...While Dole has been trapped in a vacuum of his own making--no policies, no message--Clinton has plugged away with two new family-values proposals a week. They are popular, conservative, small-bore measures designed to show his concern over truancy, deadbeat dads, burning churches and whatever else is polling well. "You guys [in the press] don't always pay much attention," says a Clinton adviser, "but people eat this stuff...