After New Year’s, Dole was totally fed up with the budget negotiations. His message of balancing the budget had turned into shutting down the government for more than two weeks. It was crazy. For over a month he had been saying his side had no plan for an endgame, and now polls showed the public supported Clinton’s approach on the budget almost 2 to 1.
“I know a lot of people probably are out there muttering, what are these clowns doing back there?” he said later in an interview. “Why can’t these clowns get together? I know how people sit around the pool hall or at home. What the hell’s going on back there?”
On Tuesday, January 2, 1996, Dole went to the Senate floor. “Enough is enough!” he said, and pushed through a resolution to reopen the government. It took Gingrich several days to rally the House behind the resolution and he had to put his speakership on the line to get the votes, but the government was reopened. No permanent budget agreement, however, had been reached, though talks continued.
After sitting through the dozens of initial hours with Clinton in the Oval Office, Dick Armey had reached some conclusions. There were two Clintons—the outside-the-room political Clinton and the inside-the-room charmer who reached out to everyone. Armey felt Clinton was too insecure to continue to be in a room with a man that he hadn’t properly courted and seduced. “I think I bugged him because he couldn’t get me to love him,” Armey said. He knew that Clinton didn’t love him, but found that the president continued his personal outreach program.
At one point, Clinton came around the table and poured a cup of coffee for Armey. But Armey was not impressed. Another time, late at night, all the others were talking around the Oval Office coffee table, and Armey was standing apart from the group, thinking, let’s get the hell out of here. Clinton left the group and came to Armey. He moved in real close and chummy.
“You know, Dick,” Clinton said, “I have really enjoyed getting to know you in these meetings, and I’ve discovered you’re not nearly as bad a guy as I thought you were.” He praised more, then added, “If you’ll accept it, I would like to apologize to you for that event we had, that blowup we had.”
“Mr. President,” Armey replied, “there’s no need to apologize to me for that. It really wasn’t a big deal. But of course I’ll accept.” Armey felt he was getting dangerously close to slipping into Clinton’s orbit, but he was able to resist.
Bill Lacy had been monitoring Steve Forbes and his massive advertising efforts for months, much to the amusement of some others on the staff.
“Gramm’s the competition here,” Mari Will said, almost laughing in Lacy’s face. “And we’re going to get distracted by a straw man and we’re going to take our eye off the ball, and we’re going to lose the nomination.”
On Friday, January 5, Lacy received their latest poll numbers. Forbes was ahead 7 points in Arizona and had moved into second place in Iowa! He was alarmed, realizing they had deceived themselves rather dramatically, and he blamed himself for not trusting his instincts. As always the heavy advertising was paying off, and Forbes had spent millions. There was only one comfort for Lacy. In the fall, there had been no way to win an advertising war of attrition with Forbes, who could spend millions more of his own money. Now, a month from the Iowa caucuses, the Dole campaign had a chance.
In New Jersey, Bill Dal Col had just received similar polling information. Forbes was so far ahead in Arizona that someone would have to wake up. Dal Col laughed, certain that Dole would erupt at Scott Reed. “My God,” Dal Col said, “he’s going back there, he’s going to tell Scott, ‘I want that rich little bastard and I want him now.’”
In Washington, Lacy went to work. He asked Stuart Stevens, Dole’s media consultant, to come up with some initial scripts for negative ads attacking Forbes. The first scripts made fun of Forbes, treated him as a joke, a man who inherited a publishing empire, had never held elective office and now wanted to buy the presidency. Way too cute, Lacy thought. They had to take Forbes and his ideas seriously—and attack them.
Dole himself was pretty hot over Forbes’s attacks.
“Yeagggrh!” Dole said. “The first negative ads said Bob Dole voted for this big subway and Bob Dole voted for a ski resort in Idaho. This guy running for president or Congress?” Dole sarcastically noted that Forbes’s proposed flat tax would give Forbes a substantial tax cut.
Lacy argued that the polling showed Republicans didn’t care that much about Forbes’s money, what they cared about was their own money. Lacy and Stevens made an ad saying that Forbes would bring “untested leadership, risky ideas.” The 30-second spot said Forbes’s flat tax would increase the federal deficit. For good measure it also said Forbes opposed mandatory life sentences for three-time felons—the so-called “three strikes and you’re out” legislation.
By Monday, January 8, before they had made a decision to air Dole’s new ad, Lacy’s internal polling showed that Forbes had closed within 6 points of Dole in Iowa, 30 to 24. Just as important, under the barrage of Forbes’s negative Dole ads, Dole’s unfavorable rating in Iowa had gone from just 13 percent in the fall to 30 percent now.
“We’ve got to take this guy out,” Lacy said.
Scott Reed thought it was a very dicey call: front-runner goes negative. Would it look like panic?
Lacy said they had no choice, and he urged that they put the negative Forbes ad on the air in Iowa before an upcoming candidate debate sponsored by the Des Moines Register on January 13. Others worried that the ad would ignite Dole’s temper and he might lash out at Forbes.
No, Lacy said, they needed to get the ad on the air immediately as a safety valve for Dole. If Dole knew the ad was taking on Forbes, he would not feel he had to attack Forbes personally.
Reed agreed, and talked with Dole.
“We’ve been the Boy Scouts in this field long enough,” Reed said. Time to get Forbes’s attention. With four weeks to go before the Iowa vote, they had the money to saturate television. If they moved quickly and bought up large chunks of airtime, even Forbes’s millions wouldn’t be able to outbuy them by that much. Only so much television time existed.
It was phenomenal, Dole said, that all the negative advertising could drive up his unfavorables so much. All that money Forbes used to attack, attack, attack! “Money speaks, money talks,” Dole said. Fighting back was okay with him. He likened it to lifting the arms embargo in Bosnia. Yeah, all right, he said. “Lift and strike!”
Morris had continued to press Clinton on welfare reform, literally begging Clinton to sign a Senate welfare reform bill in the works. The pressure had seemed to be paying off earlier, when on September 16 he persuaded Clinton to give a Saturday radio address praising the bill and all but promising to sign it. Three days later, the bill passed the Senate 87 to 12, enough votes to override a presidential veto. Nearly all the Republicans and a majority of the Democrats voted for the bill called the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1995. The bill imposed a time limit. A person could only collect welfare for five years. Getting the welfare issue off the table was one of Morris’s foremost strategic goals.
But the Health and Human Services Department presented Clinton with a study showing that about 1.5 million children would be thrown into poverty by the bill because 75 percent of the children whose families were on welfare were on it for more than five years.
Though he initially seemed supportive, intense publicity about the study put Clinton in a crunch. Marian Wright Edelman, head of the Children’s Defense Fund and an old friend and decades-long children’s activist with Hillary, laid down a strong marker. She appealed publicly to Clinton’s “moral conscience” not to go along with the Republican measure. The bill changed somewhat in negotiations with the House, and became harsher. The Senate on December 22 passed a final version 52 to 47. The publicity and the House’s impact had won back all but one of the Senate’s 46 Democrats. So 45 Democrats and two Republicans voted against it.
Dole no longer had the votes to override Clinton’s veto. He spoke with Clinton after Christmas.
“I don’t think the Senate bill we passed is that bad,” Dole said.
Clinton cited the study about throwing 1.5 million children into poverty.
Dole said he had seen so many studies over the years he didn’t know what to believe. The bill was a significant first step and was largely consistent with the principles that Clinton had outlined. “It’s only a five-year bill and if we find out in a year that some of those things are true, we can change it,” Dole said. “It’s not that we don’t meet every year.” Dole’s advice was to sign it. “We’re going to be around. We’re not cold-hearted up here. We’ve got a pulse.”
Clinton said he thought the bill had changed too much and the cuts would be too hard on children, including some big structural changes in foster care, food stamps and the school lunch program.
“If you’re going to veto it, Mr. President,” Dole said, “you ought to set down why you’re vetoing it, otherwise you’re going to be hard-pressed.”
“I’ll do that,” Clinton replied.
But Clinton shifted ground again. On January 6, 1996, Clinton offered to accept the five-year welfare limit as part of his overall balanced budget proposal.
Three days later, at 8 P.M., he shifted again. While Washington was still snowed in, Clinton vetoed a separate welfare bill based largely on the Senate version.
Dole took to the Senate floor the next day. “The president may have tried to hide this ‘stealth veto’ by doing it late at night, but he cannot hide the message he is sending to the American people,” Dole said. “He will stand in the way of fundamental change and, instead, will fight for the status quo.”
Clinton sensed that as they settled into 1996, Dole was more reluctant for a budget or any other deal. He seemed to be saying, forget it in the campaign year.
Dole still maintained he wanted a budget deal, but that he couldn’t take any more meetings. “I’ve got to get out of here,” he had said repeatedly to whomever was sitting next to him, including House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt. He had met for some 50 hours with Clinton and the others. His eyes would glaze over. “Numbers, numbers, numbers!” he said. “It got to be an endurance contest.” He felt like a potted plant or a prop. The winter snowstorms came. “Meet! Meet! Meet!” he said, wagging his head. “Snowstorm! Meet! Blizzard! Meet! Meet!”
Clinton remained heavily involved in the day-to-day presentation of his campaign through television advertising. The pre-Christmas ad called “Children” had accused the Republicans of wanting to cut tax credits for the poor, health care and education for children. A new ad was proposed saying the Republicans were willing to balance the budget on the backs of children.
Dick Morris and Bob Squier came up with the new ad, not very subtly called “SLASH,” with the same theme about Republican cuts in health care, education and the environment versus Clinton’s efforts to protect those programs. Pulling no punch, the ad put the choice in terms of “duty” to children.
Clinton said that he didn’t want the standard visual of Dole and Gingrich flashed in the ad.
Squier disagreed strongly. It was a small point, but one that he and his ad specialists thought would make a difference. Right when the ad said, “Drastic Republican budget cuts,” they wanted to put up the picture of two of the horsemen of the apocalypse—Gingrich and Dole. Other Republican leaders, like House Budget Chairman Kasich, were out there publicly calling the Clinton plan—and by inference Clinton himself—a turkey.
“Yeah,” Clinton said, “but it’s not Gingrich and Dole.” The spirit of the budget negotiations was not to personalize their differences. They were trying to avoid personal attacks.
But they were the symbols of the Republican Party, Squier argued, and lashing Dole to Gingrich was a key part of the strategy to contrast Republican extremism with Clinton’s reasonableness.
“Those are the guys in the room,” Clinton said, referring to the budget discussions in the Oval Office, “and that’s the way it is.”
Squier pressed very hard. He thought Clinton was dead goddamn wrong.
No pictures, Clinton said. “That’s the way it’s going to be,” the president directed, “and you do what I tell you to do.”
“SLASH” ran without pictures or references to Dole or Gingrich. It was paid for by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and was supposed to have nothing to do with the Clinton-Gore reelection effort.
Clinton personally had been controlling tens of millions of dollars worth of DNC advertising. This enabled him to exceed the legal spending limits and effectively rendered the DNC an adjunct to his own reelection effort. He was circumventing the rigorous post-Watergate reforms that were designed to limit and control the raising and spending of money for presidential campaigns. His direct, hands-on involvement was risky, certainly in violation of the spirit of the law and possibly illegal.
For practical purposes, Clinton’s control of the party advertising—and his aggressive use of it going back to the first Medicare ads the previous August—gave him at least $25 million more for the primary period. That was in addition to the $37 million the Clinton-Gore campaign was authorized to spend under the law. And Clinton did not have a primary challenger. In contrast Dole, who had to fight his way through the expensive primaries and had no similar control over the Republican National Committee until the primaries were over, was limited to the $37 million. The playing field was not level.
I called Lawrence M. Noble, the general counsel of the Federal Election Commission, one of the premier non-partisan experts on money in politics. Noble had been with the commission for 19 years, and its top lawyer for ten years. I outlined the hypothetical situation of a presidential candidate deeply involved in his party’s advertising, but without saying it involved any candidate in particular. Noble had one comment. “We have forgotten the lessons of Watergate.”
The Federal Election Commission consists of six commissioners, three Democrats and three Republicans. Scott E. Thomas, one of the three Democrats and a commissioner for the last ten years, said the law had been seriously undermined, and new reform was needed. “The limits and prohibitions are basically out the window,” he said.
Meanwhile, Dole still was fighting Steve Forbes. His first attack ad on Forbes aired Friday, January 12.
Almost immediately, Nelson Warfield received a call from a newspaper reporter who had checked the facts in the ad. Indeed, Forbes had said he opposed the “three strikes and you’re out” legislation, but in the same sentence, in the interview the Dole campaign was using, he had said, “I believe in one strike and you’re out.”
“What the fuck!” Warfield screamed. He checked the backup material, and the reporter was absolutely right. Lacy and Stevens had rushed making the ad. Warfield, who was campaigning with Dole, pointed this out. The new big negative ad had a significant distortion in it, Warfield said.
Maybe we should pull the ad, Dole told Reed.
Reed was furious at the mistake, but said it would be unthinkable to pull the ad. That would be an admission of wrongdoing and it would become a huge news story: Front-runner pulls first negative ad because of unfair distortions. Too devastating. No way. They would find some way to brush it off.
Dole said okay.
Forbes saw the ad. My God, he thought, this is going to get nasty. They’re going to knock me down.
Bill Dal Col had been waiting for some attention. “Why won’t the media pay any attention to us?” Dal Col had been asking for weeks. Finally. He was delighted at the attention from the front-runner. The distortion was an added opportunity. “Boy, are we going to shove this up his nose.” Forbes made a counter ad saying Dole was “desperate” and “deceiving voters.”
Warfield finally put out a convoluted press release, arguing that the second part of the Forbes quote, “I believe in one strike and you’re out,” was clearly referring to another tough-on-crime issue, truth in sentencing. So it was fair to say that Forbes opposed three strikes and you’re out, he asserted.
But privately Warfield was distraught. These ads were supposed to be researched within an inch of their life. They had to be bulletproof, not Swiss cheese. The more Warfield went over the simple ad, the more he realized it also was not very good, mixing too many issues, from the deficit to crime. And the central theme, charging Forbes with “Untested leadership, risky ideas,” was not powerful enough. Two of those four words, “leadership” and “ideas,” were positive, and “risky” was not so negative. A lot of people wanted to take risks, Warfield thought. Why were their ads so bad? he wondered.
On Saturday, January 13, at 1 P.M. all the Republican candidates gathered at the Iowa Public TV Studio on Corporate Drive in Johnston, Iowa, for the debate.
Lamar Alexander led off. “The Forbes tax plan is a truly nutty idea in the Jerry Brown tradition,” Alexander said, referring to the former Democratic California governor who had previously run for president.
In a private holding room, Bill Dal Col and John McLaughlin, Forbes’s pollster, were hysterical, jumping up and down with joy.
“Jackass,” Dal Col said, “he just bought himself some trouble.” Alexander was clearly the most frustrated of the candidates, seeing Forbes move into the limelight as he was still struggling to break out of the pack. They would have to hit Alexander next with a negative ad, Dal Col thought.
“And, Steve,” Alexander continued in the debate, “the only thing you’ve ever run is a magazine you inherited and you raised the price of your magazine.”
All right! Dal Col thought.
Next, Dole took a swing, suggesting that the money needed to run the government could be borrowed from Forbes. Gramm took a punch at Forbes about opposing a balanced federal budget.
In the Dole holding room, Reed and Lacy were pleased that Alexander and Gramm were also hitting Forbes.
Dal Col was still elated at the attention and the suggestion that Forbes’s ideas were framing the debate. Dole was an automatic. He was going to attack. But Gramm too, great! Where was Buchanan? Dal Col wondered as the debate continued.
A few minutes later Buchanan said, “Since everybody’s been piling on Steve Forbes, I want to be fair and I want to jump into piling on a bit, Steve.”
The audience laughed. Dal Col was jumping.
Buchanan said that the rich could retire and under the Forbes plan pay no taxes on their investment earnings or profits—a plan “worked up by the boys at the yacht basin.”
Where was Morry Taylor, the wealthy tire and wheel manufacturer who was also a candidate? Dal Col thought.
Soon Taylor took a crack at the Forbes tax plan. “It would have me paying no tax on $15 million of capital gains,” Taylor said, “and my employees paying 17 percent. That’s wrong.”
Up on the stage, Forbes initially felt annoyed because the debate format did not allow him to respond to each of his opponents. But as the criticism of him continued to mount, he thought to himself: Do these people realize what they’re doing? They are making me the alternative. Why doesn’t one of these professional politicians realize the dynamics they’ve created and take a different tack? Are they so inflexible that once they’re on a course, they can’t change?
Afterwards, Dal Col went to Forbes.
“You did great!” Dal Col said, barely containing his glee. “They creamed you! You’re going to be in the news!”
“This is it,” Forbes said. “This is the new dimension. This is the real race.”
Forbes realized that the central challenge of his campaign was at hand. He had established himself as a serious candidate, and the serious criticism would no doubt begin. His opponents and the media would draw some blood—a good deal of it. Forbes well knew that he was no Colin Powell or Dwight Eisenhower. He was starting fresh, with no national reputation to fall back on. What would happen to his support once the real piling on began? Once it became cumulative? It was one thing for him to hold his own on Nightline or Meet the Press, but what if the whole political establishment came down on him? What kind of toll would a continuous hammering take? What if the positive side of him and his message were not reinforced somewhere? What if everything else was negative? He wasn’t going to win the endorsement contest with Dole, but he needed someone to stand up, some respected figure in the party, to rise up and say, Forbes is okay.
On Wednesday, January 17, Lacy went to Arizona to watch two focus groups on Forbes. By that point, Forbes had run close to $2 million of advertising in Arizona—an extraordinary amount, especially when no other candidate was running TV ads. The first focus group of ten men and women had been drawn from people who said they supported Forbes.
For two hours, Lacy watched in horror. One of the voters called Forbes an American hero. They all loved that Forbes was an outsider, loved the notion that he was proposing risky ideas! Dole’s 60-second biographical ad was shown with Elizabeth and Bob talking about his war injury. Most of the focus group gagged. They were appalled. What does that have to do with the campaign? one asked. The others nodded. Who does this guy think he is? another inquired. They trashed Elizabeth, and one woman inaccurately said that she knew that the president of the Red Cross was a political appointment, so they knew how Elizabeth got that position. The members of the group also believed everything that was said about Dole in the Forbes negative ads. Some anti-Forbes ads were shown and the members didn’t buy any of it. Bullets bounced off the guy.
Lacy found the second group, ten undecided voters, could be sold on some of the Forbes negatives, but they still liked him and found Dole wanting. Lacy returned to Washington stunned. He knew concentrated advertising could drill home a message, but he had never quite seen anything like it.
Reed and Lacy agreed there was no way they could spend several million dollars in Arizona to attempt to catch up. They didn’t have the money. They would have to ride it out and see if their concentrated advertising paid off in Iowa, which was two weeks before Arizona.
“Got to get Forbes,” Dole said. “Get Forbes.”
That same day, January 17, about 10:30 A.M. Dole was in his Majority Leader’s Office with Gingrich, Armey and the other Republican leaders. They were waiting for a call from Clinton to discuss where to go with the budget negotiations.
“You got to see Time magazine,” Dole said to Armey. The previous week’s issue of the magazine had a giant photo, covering nearly two inside pages, of their closed budget meetings with Clinton in the Oval Office. The photo showed Clinton talking at an easel with Magic Marker in hand like the professor. All the others—Dole, Gingrich, Armey, Panetta and the Democratic leaders—were seated around dutifully, seemingly spellbound and listening.
“Us getting taught by the master!” Armey exploded. He had seen how Clinton used photographs to manipulate people. The president had killed Newt with that picture of them together on Air Force One. At the beginning of the talks, Armey had insisted on personal assurances from both Clinton and Gore that if the White House photographer took pictures, none would be released. The picture had clearly been leaked from the White House to show the others in a subservient role.
As Armey was raging, Clinton called. Dole, Gingrich and Armey picked up phone extensions. After the most perfunctory greetings, Armey confronted Clinton.
“Mr. President,” Armey said, “I’m sure that you have any number of people in that room, and you probably have somebody on the phone with us, and I’m sure somebody’s taking notes.”
Clinton voiced surprise at the accusation, and he assured Armey that he was on the phone alone in the Oval Office, and Panetta was in the room with him.
“Mr. President,” Armey said, “I have to tell you how bitterly disappointed I am to have seen that picture in Time. You and the vice president both gave us your assurances that none of those pictures would be used.”
“Armey’s upset about a picture in Time,” Clinton said to Panetta. “What is it?”
“It’s there,” Armey snapped, “I just saw it a minute ago.”
“Well, of course, you know, Dick, that’s the White House photographers. You can’t hold me responsible for that.”
“Mr. President,” Armey replied, “who am I supposed to hold responsible for it? It’s your White House. You’re the one that promised me it wouldn’t be there.”
To Armey, the photograph represented how Clinton had taken control. Armey thought if the year were a videotape, it would be of Republicans bringing the Contract through the House, lickety-split. In the Senate, it would start to bog down but still enough would pass and the tape would continue. Then the seven-year budget would get to the White House and the president would reach up and hit the pause button. With one stroke, bam!, Clinton had vetoed their work and put it in the dumper. Armey thought of the 1968 song from the pop charts, “MacArthur Park,” and the line about working so hard and not being able to get the pieces back together again. He had resolved not to go back for negotiations with Clinton.
In the Oval Office, Clinton rolled his eyes as Armey continued. Armey would not let the issue of the photo go. After Armey finally stopped, Gingrich also voiced some anger about the photo. He was terribly frustrated by the process, but he finally relaxed. Gingrich and Clinton continued for some time talking about whether they could agree.
“I just don’t think we can,” Gingrich said. “There’s no reason for us to come back up there.”
Dole tried, but it was stalemate. He realized, without a doubt, that Clinton had stalled the Republican revolution.
Armey’s performance had surprised Dole. Everyone exploded in politics, Dole knew, but Armey had really been rude.
“If I’d been the president,” Dole said later, “and they were talking to me like that, I’d have hung up on them.”
Clinton later berated McCurry for releasing the photo. “They have a right to be pissed about it,” the president said. “Those are confidential meetings!”
Dole and Gingrich were appearing that same day with Jack Kemp to announce the findings of the Kemp Commission, a group the Republican leaders had set up earlier in the year to recommend changes in the tax reform.
Earlier on, Clinton and Dole had been speaking. “You’re going to endorse the flat tax, aren’t you, Bob?” Clinton had said encouragingly. Dole realized the president was in effect saying, “Drink the poison, Bob.”
At the press conference, Dole split the baby. He said he could support a flat tax as long as it did not increase either the federal deficit or taxes on the middle class. Of course, he knew the flat taxes under consideration did both—which was why the flat tax was poison. Also, the rich would get dramatic tax reductions, and Dole knew that Clinton would love nothing more than for the Republicans to prove they were the party of the rich by endorsing it.
On Monday, January 22, both Time and Newsweek put Forbes on the cover of their magazines, a stunning twofer. Traditionally, the news magazines waited until after the New Hampshire primary—still a month away—before billboarding a primary candidate. Dal Col had been pushing reporters for both magazines, and when he saw the results, he went berserk with joy. Newsweek pictured Forbes tearing up the hated 1040 tax return under a giant headline: RRRRip! It was equivalent to millions of dollars of free advertising for the campaign.
Dal Col said to Forbes, who was taking his prominence coolly in stride, “Don’t you understand, nobody half the time reads inside the magazine. You’re on both covers!” Dal Col added that the public had to be feeling, “My God, he must be real. He must have arrived!”
Mari Will began putting together a long-term strategy, trying to block out the year ahead for Dole. The perfect kickoff would be for Dole to give the Republican response to Clinton’s State of the Union speech. She lobbied very hard. To her amazement, some on the campaign didn’t want Dole to do it. Someone suggested that Dole have some children or a family give the response to underscore the theme of protecting the future generations.
“Hel-looo!” Will said, “We’re running for president. And it’s our chance to be opposite Clinton.”
Dole decided he would reply himself.
Will began preparing a ten-minute speech under the theme of what she called “While You Were Sleeping.” As the voters were sleeping, the liberals had hijacked their major institutions. The schools were being run by the liberal teachers’ union and the federal government. And the police couldn’t arrest anyone without great difficulty, the courts couldn’t convict anyone, the streets were a mess, kids weren’t learning and the culture was debased. She crafted a strong values-laden speech that criticized the elite liberal establishment and held up Clinton as the embodiment of a pro-government, dying status quo. “While the president’s words speak of change, his actions are a contradiction.” The veto of the first balanced budget in a generation and the welfare reform plan proved it.
By noon on Tuesday, January 23, Dole’s speech was done and ready—a world record for Dole. He practiced in his office several times on the TelePrompTer with Don Sipple, the former Wilson media adviser who had signed up with the Dole campaign. It was Sipple’s first project with Dole. He was supposed to work on Dole’s speaking habits—elevate his confidence level, his comfort level and his style of delivery. Dole’s pace in reading the speech was crucial and Sipple tried to get him to slow down and use his body for punctuation. In the practice rounds it wasn’t bad, though not yet smooth. Dole was having trouble getting the rhythm.
Gingrich stopped by Dole’s office. He had just read Dole’s text.
“Brilliant speech!” Gingrich said, booming in his best pep-rally self-confidence, “don’t change a word, and you know I like to change everything.”
Dole and the others laughed.
“Bob,” Gingrich added dramatically, “no one will ever again say you don’t have a vision.”
Dole was up. He went back to practicing, but it was not that good. He felt like he was getting a cold, and he decided to go home about 5 P.M. to exercise and get some rest.
At the White House, Clinton was still fiddling with his speech. He had received the first draft six days earlier—“the fire hydrant draft,” the speechwriters called it because figuratively they expected and encouraged everyone to urinate on it. Many did, including Clinton. The second draft contained the very Morrisesque line, “The era of big government is over.” It was a declaration that Clinton was a different Democrat, a New Democrat, heading more and more in the Republican direction.
Dick Morris saw that his ideas were being used, and he backed off early in the process. The speech would present Clinton as touting traditional Republican objectives and values but saying he wanted to do it his way, with more heart and generosity. “It’s going the way I want,” Morris said. The speech was built around seven challenges that Clinton would make on issues ranging from families to smaller government.
Just before the State of the Union the night of January 23, Stephanopoulos and McCurry went to the basement map room of the White House residence to wait for Clinton to come down for the motorcade to the Capitol. They had obtained a copy of Dole’s text and read it carefully.
On paper, McCurry thought Dole’s speech the better. Reading them side by side, anyone would pick Dole’s in a heartbeat, McCurry felt. But these were speeches, to be delivered, not read, and McCurry, who had been involved for years in preparing the Democratic responses to President Reagan’s State of the Union speeches, knew it was not going to be a fair fight. Clinton had the communications skills, and he had the giant hall of the House of Representatives with a live audience as his stage. Dole would be in a small room staring into a camera.
Clinton arrived, aware that his aides had read the competition.
“What do you think?” Clinton asked.
Stephanopoulos and McCurry looked at each other.
“It’s a good speech,” Stephanopoulos said. “It’s a very tough speech.” Both McCurry and he thought it would be pretty effective. “But it’s a primary speech, and you’re giving a general election speech tonight to the whole country, and he’s only talking to Iowa and New Hampshire.”
Dole came back to the Capitol about 7 P.M. and took a Sudafed, the mild cold pill. He went down to the holding room in the Capitol to greet Clinton before their speeches.
“You’ll excuse me,” Dole said to Clinton, “I’ve got to run back and work on my response.” Dole went back and began to practice his own speech.
In the House chamber, Clinton was announced and entered, shaking hands all along the way to the podium. The day before, Gingrich had been asked what he hoped Clinton would say in his speech. “Thank you and good night,” Gingrich had replied, only half-joking. Upon taking the podium, Clinton turned to Gingrich, whose seat was directly behind, and handed him a piece of paper that said, “State of the Union…Thank you and good night.” Gingrich burst out laughing.
Dole watched some of Clinton’s speech from his own office. Clinton had the entire audience, which included the full Senate and full House, in his hand. Dole continued to practice, hitting his stride, even a new peak as he psyched himself up.
How much of Clinton’s speech was left, he asked.
Clinton was at about five of 13 pages, one of Dole’s aides reported.
Dole deflated. What? Why so long? He stopped practicing. He paced. He looked around, waited.
“This is getting past my bedtime,” Dole joked about 10 P.M. As the time ticked by, Dole said maybe it would be past midnight before he had a chance to give his reply. Perhaps, he suggested mischievously, he should change his greeting from “Good evening” to “Good morning.”
There was another 30 minutes of waiting for Clinton to finish.
Sipple wanted no one in Dole’s eyeline so all the staff were sent out, leaving only the cameraman and director from ABC, which was providing the pool coverage. Sipple wanted to put a filter on the lens, but ABC controlled the situation and they had a rule against filters. Dole was going to stand up for the speech.
“Good evening,” Dole finally began. “I’m Bob Dole, and I’m here to reply to the president’s message on the state of the union.”
The lighting was terrible, and Dole’s face looked wrinkled, crinkly, dark. His voice was hurried, not steady. His herves showed. A bit of cotton-mouth struck. Stiff and ill at ease, he nonetheless forged on. After several minutes he got better, but he was still shaky.
“President Clinton shares a view of America held by our country’s elites,” Dole said. “President Clinton may well be the rear guard of the welfare state.”
“I’ve never gone in for dramatics, but I do believe we have reached a defining moment. It is as if we went to sleep in one America, and woke up in quite another. It is as though our government, our institutions and our culture have been hijacked by liberals and are careening dangerously off course.”
“We will begin the unfunding of Big Brother.”
Finally, he was done and said good night.
Mari Will ran into the room.
“Yes! Yes!” she declared. “Oh, boy, that was great.”
Dole believed they would tell him the truth. “Yeeeeaaah,” another senior staffer said. They all concurred.
Dole noticed a celebration in the outer office. He called Elizabeth.
“Oh, that was good!” Elizabeth said. She had just talked to her 94-year-old mother, a good critic, who also had liked it.
Dole called Scott Reed, who had watched it at his home in Annapolis.
“How did I do?” Dole inquired.
“I thought you did great!” Reed said. They still had to appeal to primary voters and the hosing of the liberals and the elites was perfect. “You were right on. You looked a little nervous at first, but halfway through it you got into feeling comfortable and into a rhythm and finished very strong.”
Well, Dole thought to himself, the early returns are good. He went home to his Watergate apartment and slept well that night.
At about 5:30 A.M. the next morning, Charlie Black, chief strategist for Gramm, arose early and picked up a copy of The Washington Post. The banner headline read, “Clinton Embraces GOP Themes in Setting Agenda.” Beneath it was a very prominently displayed news analysis by David S. Broder, the dean of American political reporting. Black read: “President Clinton was longer and stronger.” On the front-page portion of the analysis an independent pollster was quoted about Dole, “He seemed old and tired.” A senior Republican said Dole “came across as having no soul,” and another said it was “a pretty grim night for the GOP.”
Black knew Broder was a powerful and generally cautious force in political reporting, and he had given a dramatic thumbs-down on Dole’s performance. “Shit, man,” Black thought to himself, “there is a feeding frenzy in the making. The chief blackbird just flew over to the next wire.”
At the Watergate, Dole got up thinking, Jimminy, there’s going to be a lot of nice stuff in the paper and on TV. He read the Broder article on his performance. God, that speech must have been awful, who gave it? he thought, trying to laugh it off.
The critique of his speech as bad television and bad performance art increased all day. Dole, flying off to campaign in Iowa, was glad he would not have to face his Republican colleagues in the Senate at their weekly policy lunch. Maybe he had let the party down, he thought. “There is nothing worse than trying to speak in an empty room,” he said in Iowa.
But it had been a television event, and everyone had an opinion. Phil Gramm said, “Bob Dole cannot and will not beat Bill Clinton.” Pat Buchanan, campaigning in New Hampshire, said, “I think for the last three months, we have been, quite frankly, getting our clocks cleaned by President Bill Clinton.”
“Dole’s response last night left me scratching my head,” Rush Limbaugh said on his radio show. “Sure the words were there, but it was the overall energy and passion that disappointed me.”
At the policy lunch of Republican senators, Jesse Helms stood up and declared, “That was the worst performance I’ve ever seen! And whoever did the lighting ought to be fired.”
Many of the other Republican senators began pounding the tables in agreement like a scene out of the movie Animal House.
“You know,” Dole said later, “I thought I’d done well but it turned out I didn’t do well.” It was that simple and that complicated. Dole’s advisers may have thought that he had been better than he usually was. But they had failed to realize that he was not going to be measured against the former Bob Dole. He was going to be measured against Bill Clinton.
David Hume Kennerly, a Pulitzer Prize winner who had been President Ford’s White House photographer, had been allowed to spend the entire week with Dole shooting pictures for Newsweek. The next week Newsweek’s cover blared “Doubts About Dole,” with a most unflattering black and white photograph Kennerly had taken. Dole’s face, which was half in shadow, had a crinkly, makeup-laden look. His eyes were dark, haunted and almost lost, as he clutched his good left hand to nervously cover half his mouth. The picture had been taken while Dole was wearing makeup for an MTV interview, but it seemed to be a still version—and a stark reminder—of the Dole many had seen replying to Clinton’s State of the Union address.
When Dole later ran into Kennerly in a hotel lobby, he did a full U-turn to seek him out.
“Sure glad we let you spend all that time with us,” Dole said. A smile was frozen on his face.
“I think the cover picture showed a lot of character,” replied Kennerly. He had privately protested to the Newsweek editors about the use of such a hideous photograph.
“It made me look like I was dug up from the grave,” replied Dole.
“Other than that,” Kennerly said, “how’d you like it?”
Dole spun on his heel and walked away.
The day after the State of the Union speech, Clinton left for Kentucky to give two anti-crime speeches. En route on Air Force One, he called Gingrich. The Speaker had just publicly proposed a scaled-down version of a budget agreement. Instead of a seven-year plan, Gingrich had proposed a two-year plan with spending and tax cuts.
Clinton told Gingrich that he was intrigued by the possibility, but then Clinton went on at some length to explore the impact on Dole. What did Dole want? Where was his head now? “If we put that together,” the president said, “I think it’ll help Dole.” A two-year agreement wouldn’t hurt Dole in the Republican primaries, Clinton said, adding, “I think Dole will be able to do that.”
After Clinton hung up, Mike McCurry asked about the sensitivity to Dole. “Why do you care so much about what Dole’s position in the primaries is going to be?” McCurry inquired.
“Look at the bunch of nitwits they’ve got running,” Clinton said, referring to the Republican field. “Dole’s the only one that’s got any capability to do the job. Something could happen to me. We could have a major crisis that goes bad on us or something bad could happen in Bosnia and they might throw me out on my rear end.” The news was full of new Whitewater allegations, long-missing files suddenly turning up in the White House residence, memos and notes surfacing that seemed to contradict statements that Hillary had made. He might need Dole’s support on Bosnia or Whitewater, Clinton said. Or he might lose the presidency. “I want to have some confidence in the person I turn the keys over to.”
Flying back that night, McCurry had a touchy task. He knew that Clinton detested the Washington culture, especially the hang-around crowd of former government officials and journalists who seemed to have lifetime tenure. William Safire was the very embodiment of two of those loathsome strains. Safire had been a speechwriter in the Nixon White House, and as a New York Times columnist for the last two decades was forever putting the heaviest positive spin on Nixon’s legacy.
McCurry handed Clinton a large red professional boxing glove. It belonged to Safire.
Clinton looked at it in disgust. In his column, Safire had earlier in the month called Hillary a “congenital liar” on various Whitewater matters. McCurry had replied publicly that if Clinton were not the president, he would deliver a response “on the bridge of Mr. Safire’s nose.” Clinton himself had said, “When you’re president, there are a few more constraints on you than if you’re an ordinary citizen. If I were an ordinary citizen, I might give the article the response that it deserves.”
This had created a big flap, generating lots of attention for Safire and his column. When Safire had appeared on NBC Television’s Meet the Press, host Tim Russert had given Safire a pair of boxing gloves. Safire had then sent one of the gloves to McCurry with a note which said, “Dear Mike, Do you suppose the president would be goodnatured enough to sign my glove? Indelible ink pen enclosed.”
“I can’t do that,” Clinton said, holding the glove and the pen. I can’t do that. I know I should. Do you think I should?”
“Mr. President,” McCurry replied, “the guy’s going to write a column two days a week for the rest of this year, and we’re going to have to live with him.” McCurry had to act as the conciliator. He knew Clinton’s feelings about the Washington journalists, who had set themselves up as the moral arbiters of everything and everyone in politics. But Clinton needed to have the best possible relations with media heavies like Safire. “I think he’s trying to reach out to you,” McCurry added.
“I just can’t play the game,” the president said, shaking his head. He returned the glove unsigned. McCurry took it back to the White House, stashed it under his desk and wondered how to bridge the gap.
Clinton a number of times voiced fascination that while 60 percent of the public had opposed the deployment of U.S. troops to Bosnia, public approval of his foreign policy went up not down after he ordered the deployment anyway. He realized this was in part because there had been no combat casualties so far. At the same time, he saw that toughness and decisiveness were appreciated and respected even if people disagreed. He even likened it to telling your children they have to go to the dentist—they don’t want to go, but they know you’re right.
For months Morris had been obsessed with getting a budget deal. At first he had predicted that Clinton would get the deal on a specific date at the end of September. Then he had two dates in October by which it would happen. Next there were two dates in November, then one second before midnight December 31, then in early January.
Having failed, Morris turned to stealth. In an unusual step, on January 25, he wrote a memo to the other side, directly to the Dole campaign.
“Dole cannot win in either New Hampshire or Iowa unless there is a budget deal,” he wrote, citing polling data he said he had gathered after the State of the Union address. He set out different scenarios, all of which showed that Dole gained support if he pushed for a budget deal.
In one such scenario, Gingrich balked at a deal but Dole supported one. According to Morris, 57 percent said they would be more likely to support Dole because of his position and 21 percent would be less likely. In other scenarios, Dole would only beat Forbes by a large amount if there was a budget deal. Without the deal he would run even with Forbes.
Morris wrote, “You might want to check this with your own pollster.” He gave a copy to Paul Manafort, a Republican advising the Dole campaign who Morris knew from Republican circles.
Morris also gave a copy of the poll results to President Clinton, but deleted the reference to checking with “your own pollster.”
Ann Devroy, the ever resourceful White House correspondent for The Washington Post, soon obtained a copy of the memo that had gone to the Dole campaign. Devroy called Mike McCurry for comment.
McCurry tracked down Morris, who accused George Stephanopoulos of leaking it to the Post in order to discredit Morris. Stephanopoulos had taken Clinton’s copy of the memo from the White House, Morris alleged, and passed it to James Carville, the 1992 Clinton strategist, who in turn gave it to his wife, Mary Matalin, the former Bush campaign spokesperson. Matalin had seen it got leaked.
“I can prove it,” Morris said, “because the memo I sent to the president had this sentence different from the one I sent Dole.”
McCurry checked with Devroy, whose copy had the sentence about checking with “your own pollster,” disproving Morris’s allegation. McCurry, Panetta and Ickes went to see Clinton to outline what had happened. Stephanopoulos, the accused, stayed away.
Clinton got Morris on the phone.
“George did it,” Morris alleged.
“Whenever something goes wrong around here you blame it on George,” Clinton yelled. He really chewed Morris out. What an incredibly stupid, amateur stunt, Clinton said. He was furious.
Passing poll data to the Dole campaign made them look desperate for a budget deal, and it fed media accounts that Morris was playing both sides.
Ickes, who loathed Morris, took the opportunity to try to further inflame Clinton. Ickes had forced Morris to disclose his consulting fees, and they had included finder’s fees of some $18,500 from Paul Manafort’s firm—the same Paul Manafort who had received the poll data.
McCurry worried that this was the moment that Clinton’s unstable political team might come unhinged. If the incident became a big story, everyone, including Clinton, might have to take sides.
Finally everyone, including Clinton, calmed down. The only way to defuse the issue, Clinton decided, was for McCurry to issue a public rebuke to Morris in Clinton’s name. McCurry had to make clear that Clinton did not know about or authorize the sharing of poll data outside the campaign. Creating a little distance between Clinton and his increasingly famous consultant would not hurt.
Stephanopoulos felt it had been a very good day.
After Devroy’s story ran on the front page, Morris wrote Stephanopoulos a note of apology and then called him to repeat the apology.
“Dick,” Stephanopoulos said, “I’m going to work with you, we’re professionals, and I’m going to do my job, but you know I essentially don’t accept this.” His hostility boiled over. The accusation of leaking to an opponent was perhaps the worst thing in politics—flagrant disloyalty and dishonesty.
After hanging up the phone, Stephanopoulos was reminded again just how small time Morris was. Morris had made three mistakes. One, why put the information to the Dole campaign on paper? Two, why risk anyone seeing how silly and slanted the poll questions were? Three, why accuse someone in the blind, out of panic, with no evidence?
Morris claimed that he was taking the efforts to undermine him as a tribute. Because so many people wanted to deprive the president of his advice, something must be working.
McCurry believed the episode underscored his fears that the whole White House and campaign operation would come undone at some point. There were a lot of people at the table, probably too many. And Ickes had launched a war on Morris, cutting the commission on all paid advertising and even insisting that Morris stay at a cheaper hotel than the Jefferson when he was in Washington on the campaign’s expense account. Clinton obviously did not want to give either Morris or his White House staff the upper hand, but the day might come when he would have to choose.
Dole wondered about Morris. “Why would he send us that?” he asked. “It’s too tricky for me, I guess. I never was a CIA guy.”
He was equally uncomfortable with the close, longtime relationship his deputy Trent Lott had with Morris.
“Got this little thing from Morris,” Lott once said to Dole, “maybe you’d like to see it.”
Dole looked and Lott had a piece of paper filled with budget numbers reporting what the White House would accept on key issues such as Medicare.
“I don’t make any promises,” Lott told Dole. “I just receive information. I don’t call. Now he calls me. Understand?”
“I don’t understand anything,” Dole replied.