Here’s how Bob Dole wins the presidency: In October the average American looks at her TV’s sees Bill Clinton, and says . . . yuk. She then turns to her husband and tells him that she just can’t stand the thought of Clinton as president for the next four years, that their kids should grow up with a president they can respect, and that even though Bob Dole isn’t great, he’s a decent man with a reasonable sense of where he wants to take the country.
How likely is it that enough voters will say this? It’s not probable — but it’s not quite as improbable as many now think. After all, despite a tactically superb campaign by Clinton and a fairly miserable performance by Dole, Clinton’s lead has shrunk from about 18 points to about 12 in the last month. Clinton’s “reelect” number — the percentage of voters who think he deserves another term — is slightly below 50, a classic warning sign for an incumbent, and it’s hard to believe that the economic or foreign policy news is going to get better for Clinton from now to Election Day. And despite the basically good news, about 60 percent of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track — another bad omen for an incumbent running for reelection.
What’s more, the country remains more conservative than liberal. The general election campaign, if conducted with minimal competence by the Republicans, is bound to accentuate the ideological distinction between the two parties. Dole will eventually unveil a tax-cut plan, thereby increasing the salience of the still-powerful tax issue; a recent poll in the bellwether state of Michigan shows a Clinton 8-point lead over Dole shrinking to 2 when voters are asked how they would vote if Dole were running on a pledge to cut federal income tax rates by 15 percent. By October it will be harder for Clinton to keep on obscuring in a miasma of rhetoric the fact that he has vetoed tax cuts, vetoed welfare reform, vetoed the curb on partial-birth abortion, and perpetuated racial preferences. It is partly because the ideological difference between the parties tends to emerge more clearly after Labor Day that every Republican presidential candidate in the last two decades has gained ground over the final two months of the campaign. And it’s because voters are in fact more conservative than it is politically correct for them to acknowledge that conservative candidates tend to outperform the polls on election day, when voters make the real decision in the privacy of the voting booth. (This seems to be an international phenomenon, as true for Bibi Netanyahu as for George Bush; the conservative candidate does 2 or 3 points better than the final polls predict.)
So things are not as grim as Republicans, dispirited by the day-to-day ineptness of the Dole campaign, might think. Michigan Republicans were not inspired by John Engler’s challenge to Gov. Jim Blanchard in the summer of 1990; New Jersey Republicans were down in the dumps as Jim Florio cruised toward reelection at this point in 1993. Engler and Christine Todd Whitman both trailed by about 15 points in July; they both won. Dole could too. And all of this is to say nothing of Whitewater and Ken Starr or Filegate and Craig Livingstone.
Of course, once upon a time, long, long ago — in early 1995 — no one thought that one would have to make such an argument to cheer up glum Republicans. In those days of hope and glory, the confident expectation was that the 1996 election would be a rousing confirmation of the realignment of 1994. This year’s election was to be the equivalent of Franklin Roosevelt’s 1932 victory after the big mid-term gains of 1930. In early 1995, conservatives looked forward to a presidential campaign built on the achievements of the new Republican Congress; the debate was over what would be in a second Contract with America. If we weren’t going to find another Reagan, there would at least be a presidential candidate who would competently present a routinized Gingrichian agenda. This would lay the groundwork for a new conservative governing era of relimited government and reinvigorated citizenship.
All of this was not to be — at least not this year. The Republican Congress made mistakes; a mature governing conservatism at the national level turned out to be more hope than reality; the Republican presidential field was a bust; and Bill Clinton moved skillfully to the center. Now 1996 looks to be at best a pit stop on the road to conservative realignment, perhaps even a detour. Conservatives hope that Dole runs well enough to hold Congress — but apart from worrying about judicial appointments (and anyway, who knows how many Souters Dole would appoint?), conservatives seem resigned to defeat. After all, they tell themselves, we can survive four more years of Clinton — and God only knows what a Dole administration would be like!
Of course, we could survive four more years of Clinton. And if Dole doesn’t start improving, we’ll have to.
But conservatives shouldn’t underestimate either the possibility of defeating Bill Clinton in 1996 or the consequences of such a victory. For one thing, Dole’s weakness and the absence of an economic or foreign policy crisis would make a Clinton defeat even more devastating for contemporary liberalism. For another, this would, after all, be liberalism’s third strike. Programmatic liberalism — a faith in progressive social planning — bit the dust in the person of Michael Dukakis in 1988. The Democratic majority that supported liberal policies collapsed in 1994. That’s why Clinton has given up both making claims for liberalism’s future and defending its big government past.
All that is left is — the Clintons. Their character embodies contemporary liberalism. In his forthcoming book, The President We Deserve, British journalist Martin Walker argues that Bill Clinton is “the archetypal postwar American . . . thoroughly undisciplined in much of his personal life . . . in his flaws and sensual weaknesses, his readiness to put off hard decisions . . . utterly typical of the America of his day.” In fact, Clinton is utterly typical of the liberal America of our day. Reelecting Clinton would give credence to the claim that our America is inevitably and fundamentally liberal America. In his victory statement on election night 1992, Al Gore exulted, “We are the children of modern America.” Are they? That is the question the 1996 election could be made to pose to the American people. A repudiation of the Clintons on the grounds of character — on the grounds that we don’t want our children to emulate their Big Chill liberalism — could be the most profound repudiation of liberalism of them all.
For the fact is that Clinton is not the president America deserves. Bob Dole may be. His mixture of qualities probably does reflect the current state of the nation. He combines admirable personal courage with a conventional go- along-to-get-along ambition. He mixes basic decency and petty vanity. His mostly sound moral behavior goes along with an uncertainty about how to make moral judgments and whether they can be “imposed” on others. He rises above the worst aspects of our time while being swept along by many of its unattractive features. And he is confused about where the country should go. In all of these ways, Dole may be the president we deserve.
But Bill Clinton? We know we deserve better than Clinton. Half of all Americans agree with the statement that “Clinton does not have the kind of personal character and core values a president should have.” These Americans cringe as they watch Clinton “defining the presidency down,” as Joe Sobran has put it. And by 51 to 18 percent, Americans prefer Dole to Clinton on the criterion of “ethical values.”
Clinton’s character may not be enough to bring him down. Americans are perfectly capable of voting for someone with inferior ethical values if they’re convinced he’ll do a better job for the country, if they think his policies and performance will be superior. This hardheaded attitude on the part of voters isn’t unreasonable. And it’s wrong to blame the American people for not being willing to desert Clinton, at a time of peace and prosperity, when Dole has so far failed to provide an alternative agenda or a sense of leadership. But if Dole can reassure the American people that his policies will be as sound as Clinton’s, and that he’s basically up to the job of president, then Americans will want to vote for the better man.
Does Dole have to attack Clinton’s character directly? It’s not his style. He is of the World War II generation, one that has already produced six presidents, and not one that boasts of being morally superior to its children. What generation in American history would be comfortable making such a claim? But Dole does not have be boastful; he can be suitably modest and reticent in the claims he makes about himself. He doesn’t have to say he is a better man than his opponent. Nor should he try to say what isn’t true — that he has a fully thought-through and deeply compelling vision for America in the 21st century. But I think he can say directly to the American people — perhaps he can even say it to Bill Clinton during a presidential debate — that the America for which he fought deserves better than Bill Clinton, that Bill Clinton is not the president we deserve.
By William Kristol
