Word: doled
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...actions that fixed him firmly in that holiest of political spaces, the center. In standing against Republican proposals to restrain the budget-busting cost of Medicare, Clinton appeared both compassionate and firm. In embracing the G.O.P.'s call for a balanced budget (in July 1995, fully eight months before Dole's nomination), he laid claim to fiscal sanity, an issue virtually owned by the Republicans since budgets were first adopted. From there a series of small-bore but powerfully symbolic pronouncements followed. In August 1995 he urged a crackdown on tobacco advertising directed at kids. Calls for school uniforms, teen...
...primary-election schedule had been purposely compressed so a nominee would be mathematically chosen by the end of March, it was an article of faith among those considering a '96 race that a serious candidate would have to raise at least $20 million by the end of 1995. As Dole moved swiftly to corral those funds, he had an ally in Texas Senator Phil Gramm. By raising nearly as much as Dole in the year before the voting began, Gramm dashed the hopes of other wannabes. Even such G.O.P. heavyweights as "the formers"--James Baker, who had been Secretary...
Gramm imploded quickly, and the others who would make life difficult for Dole--Pat Buchanan and Steve Forbes--were perceived as unserious crank candidates, but only eventually. Despite years of practice, Dole still couldn't say why he wanted the presidency or what he would do if he got it. "It's about us," he said. "It's about you. It's about America. It's about the future, which is where we are headed." The candidate seemed oblivious to the disbelief such inanities provoked. After most performances, he said, "You can feel it, can't you? It's working...
...first un-Dole to fly was Steve Forbes, the "fresh face" millionaire publisher and supply-side devotee whose call for a "simple, flat tax" won wide support in the polls. But Dole's alliance with the Christian Coalition--a marriage of convenience, since the group was ideologically closer to Pat Buchanan but wanted most of all to win--paid off in Iowa on Feb. 12, as coalition members followed their leaders and voted for Dole. Forbes was mostly cooked. But then in New Hampshire eight days later, Buchanan upset the party favorite. That loss reflected Dole's inherent weakness despite...
Where he was in late February was in trouble. Talk of a brokered convention surfaced as party elders wrung their hands. But Dole's team had astutely built a fire wall in South Carolina. Prudently preparing for the danger they didn't expect but were in fact facing after New Hampshire, they had earlier recruited the players, like former Governor Caroll Campbell, who would on March 2 deliver the Southern state everyone deemed critical to capturing the entire region. After South Carolina, the rest of the primary march was anticlimactic. Grand plans were hatched for the months before the August...