Dream on, the hardheads tell me. It’s unprecedented in American history for the president and Senate majority leader to run against each other. They can’t simultaneously cooperate. Washington–being Washington–will revert to familiar food-fight form in a matter of days. If Dole is seen moving in Clinton’s direction, the Clinton folks will say it proves the president is the real leader. If Clinton is seen moving in Dole’s direction, the Dole folks will say the president is a weak clone. Even now, Stuart Stevens, a Dole media consultant, argues that Clinton has been reduced to saying essentially: “I’m like Bob Dole on the issues, but I can give good speeches, and if Ricki Lake needs a guest host, I’m available.”
But what if it were in each candidate’s clear political interest to put points on the scoreboard? To concentrate their minds, two words: Ross Perot. The only way for Bubba and the Bobster to stave off disaffected hordes of voters itching to clobber both of them is to prove that they aren’t the same old Bickersons. That would put both of them on the side of the public against the institutional forces that always favor delay and gridlock. National consensus versus Beltway politics. Win-win.
The candidates may be ahead of their handlers on this one. Clinton senses that he needs a few more notches on his belt to answer the “What’s he done?” question, even if it makes it harder to demonize Dole later. And Dole understands his own vision impairment and that just carping about Clinton is not going to be enough to put him over the top. The senator started his new just-do-it strategy last week by clearing the way for the line-item veto. But however important that might be, it’s not worth many votes in Pocatello. For all Dole’s formidable dealmaking talent, his dirty little secret is that, beyond the telecommunications bill and the farm bill, he has little to show for himself since the noisy Gingrichite Republicans took over Congress. Dole’s had lots of smaller victories over the years, but his landmark moments–helping save social security in 1982 and passing tax reform in 1986–are a bit long in the tooth.
So Dole needs something concrete. Let’s assume that the Big Fix–a seven-year balanced-budget deal–isn’t going to happen. It would take what one White House aide called “harmonic convergence.” Let’s also assume that bipartisan legislation in areas like welfare (the governors’ compromise version is ready), health care (which provides portability of insurance from job to job and protects against cancellation for pre-existing conditions) and job-training vouchers would obviously make Clinton look more accomplished. Would they also help Dole? The majority leader has three options:
The first is to fail to produce anything. That would look lame. Once the glow of clinching the nomination wears off, the press would ask, What’s the guy good for? He can’t talk and he can’t do. The second, more likely option is to load up the bills with extraneous items like deep Medicaid cuts that are unpalatable to Clinton and then blast the president as an obstructionist when he vetoes them. The advantage of this approach is that it allows Dole to say that Clinton hasn’t fulfilled his promise to “end welfare as we know it” or address health care. But as we saw last year, Clinton as veto-man, protecting the country against what he depicts as the excesses of the right, in fact plays well for the president, making him look more resolute. Most important, gridlock is Perot’s best friend, and a Perot bid probably hurts Dole more than Clinton.
The third option for Dole is to send up a few major bills that Clinton can sign. The danger is that he might be seen as getting along so well with Clinton that voters want to keep them both exactly where they are. But to prevent it from getting too cozy, Dole could stand fast on the Republican budget and say, “Look, if you want real fiscal responsibility, you have to elect me. But now I’ve shown you I can get big things done.”
The candidates’ advisers view legislative maneuvering on Capitol Hill with a big yawn. Dole’s people insist that the issue is simply Clinton’s character, that he lacks–and Dole exudes–what one calls “a resonating sense of self.” Each side says it’s all much larger than who gets the credit or blame for this bill or that.
Perhaps so, but for five long months between now and the conventions, the stage will be the White House and the well of the Senate. Stripped of their fun covering GOP mud wrestling, a surly and bored media will now return to covering business-as-usual in the capital. That is a potential disaster for both Clinton and Dole. Imagine if instead the nominees changed the story line to something truly fresh and surprising. They’ll still have plenty of time to rip each other’s eyeballs out this fall, but in the meantime our predictably sordid election year wouldn’t be a total loss.
