Word: doled
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This growing ennui is making the press more desperate than Bob Dole. About this time in a campaign we journalists are usually worrying about having sunk too low; instead, we fear we've risen so high we're being ignored during our quadrennial chance to show off. For a brief, shining moment we had Dick Morris: since then, nothing. After the second debate, where Jack Kemp, the designated slasher, came off more like Barney than Freddy Krueger, even Ted Koppel gave up. "Here we have one of the most civil debates in history, and we can barely stay awake...
Eating your own, now that's desperate. But so is putting the "character issue" squarely back in bounds just to spice up headlines. Last week, by some subtle communication about the new rules of engagement, the members of the press let Dole know they would not call him "mean" or a "hatchet man" if he were finally to get tough. Yet no one seems ready to re-examine private behavior, for example Dole's sudden divorce from his first wife or allegations about Clinton and Gennifer Flowers. In fact, under the current rule of confining scrutiny to "public character," only...
...Dole took the bait, using the first question in San Diego, a Can't We All Get Along-type inquiry from a grade school teacher, to bring up the FBI files and Whitewater pardons. This was so promising that an audible sigh of relief went up in the press room. Sadly, however, the panel was made up of those real people we hear so much about, and real people apparently don't take their lead from the media. They were still looking for the beef, and didn't know the new spin was, "Where's the mud?" Like jurors...
...Dole can say Clinton has no core beliefs, but that's not quite how voters see it. The flip side of someone's being indecisive is that he is still searching for the answer. Voters see Clinton not as having waffled but as having heard their message. Clinton got his comeuppance in 1994. Then, just as he did in Arkansas after voters threw him out of office in 1980, he set out to prove, "I get it, I really get it now." Whether or not that is high or good character is hard to say, but it is penitence, shrewdness...
...campaign shouldn't be turned into a Sunday school picnic where money, religion and politics are off limits. But neither the candidates, who have similarly flawed histories, nor the press, which reduces moral subjects to cartoon dimensions, is well positioned to weigh one man's soul against another's. Dole has had a free ride for several weeks. But beware. There's time for several more news cycles and rules changes without notice. Clinton could decide to defend himself so that any victory he has contains an element of redemption, not just victory. And he could go on the offensive...