The presidential race enters its last month in a mad scramble: three candidates, a blizzard of phony-facts ads and the prospect of an unprecedented nine-day stretch of three debates. From this Sunday through Oct. 19, Americans can tune in the political equivalent of a mini-series: “The Wars of Wind,” a total-immersion civics lesson.
The back-to-back-to-back debates could force the kind of concentrated, serious airing of the issues that reformers have long advocated. “The pundits won’t be able to waste time analyzing makeup and gestures,” says political scientist Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia. “The whole thing could bomb. But it also could have tremendous cumulative power”-and undercut the scholarly notion that debates don’t generally affect the outcome.
Some Clinton advisers worried that Perot could “trivialize” the sessions. But it was just as likely that he could keep them focused on substance as he touts his plan for erasing the deficit (page 42). “He wants to set the agenda for the last month of the election,” said George Christian, Lyndon Johnson’s press secretary. “He’ll say, ‘None of this manana stuff. Let’s deal with it’.”
In his infomercials, that is precisely what Perot plans to do: conduct his patented flip-chart lectures on the national economic pickle. True to his heritage as the Larry King candidate, Perot isn’t likely to hit anything that could be described as a traditional “campaign trail.” Instead, he’ll buy time on TV (a half hour on ABC as well as CBS so far) and ride the talk-show circuit. “There will be an enormous emphasis on media,” said Orson Swindle, who heads Perot’s United We Stand, America, campaign. Perot could easily double the ad budgets of the Bush and Clinton camps combined-if he’s willing to put his mouth where his money is. But no one besides Perot knows for sure what’s up. “We’re not going to lay out our strategy for you,” Perot said at a combative press conference in Dallas last week. “It will be unconventional, I’ll tell you that.”
The debates may be Bush’s last chance, Clinton’s last hurdle and Perot’s only hope. The restive American public wants change. After a week of dismal economic news-declines in consumer confidence and new-home sales, no growth in private-sector employment-voters seem convinced that Bush can’t provide that change. His job-approval rating, 33 percent, is nearly as low as Jimmy Carter’s worst. Congress is poised for the biggest turnover since World War II.
But voters haven’t quite concluded that Clinton is the proper, trustworthy instrument for prying Bush out of office. And Perot still has the potential to tip the balance. “It all depends on how Perot does in the debates,” said a top Clinton aide. “So far he doesn’t really change the equation in any state. But if he makes his economic case effectively, he could cost us votes.”
After days of vaguely sexual taunts “Let’s get it on” was the operative phrase-negotiators for Bush and Clinton hunkered down in Washington law offices to work out debate details. With each side hoping that Perot would do more damage to the other, the two camps crossed their fingers and invited him to share the stage. Perot will be there, his spokesman said. Though last-minute legal snags theoretically were possible, it seemed clear that the Commission on Presidential Debates would sponsor the event.
The incumbent usually has the most to lose in debates. But Bush has been down so long they look like up to him. Early last week he had called his consigliere, James Baker, to express his annoyance at the state of his campaign. “Why can’t we come up with something?.” Bush demanded. Within hours, Baker did: a sweeping proposal for four presidential debates on successive Sundays.
That didn’t fly, but in the end the Bush brigade got a good bit of what it wanted. They won a commitment for more debates (including a vice presidential forum on Oct. 13) than have taken place in any presidential campaign since 1976. The late-starting debates give Bush more time to try to soften up Clinton with negative advertising. While Perot’s presence could diffuse any Bush attack on Clinton, three-way events also would deprive Clinton of a head-to-head confrontation, the ultimate opportunity for a challenger to demonstrate his presidential stature on TV. None of the debates will rely solely on a moderator–a loose format the Bush team had feared.
Ahead in the polls, and so more at risk, the Clinton team was pleased to have limited its own exposure. “The testosterone level among the Clinton people is sky-high,” says a House Democrat. Of the three presidential debates–slated for Sunday in St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 15 in Richmond, Va., and Oct. 19 in East Lansing, Mich.-none will be exclusively devoted to foreign policy, presumed to be Clinton’s weak spot. There will be no election-eve debate, preventing Bush from lobbing a last-minute grenade in view of a national audience. The debates will be 90 minutes long-not 60 as the Bush team hoped for–a time frame Clintonians hope will allow Bush’s syntax to dissolve into wiggy fragments.
As a run-up to the debates, the ad wars began in earnest: a tit-for-tat of ersatz specificity that is sure to be echoed by the combatants when they take the stage Sunday. The focus was on taxes, and Bush fired first. His ad shows average folks and lists estimates of the increased taxes they “could” pay in an era of “Clinton economics.” The ad aims at the heart of what has been-at least until Bush moved his lips in 1990-the Democrats’ generic vulnerability on “tax and spend” issues.
The Clinton camp instantly cried foul-and it was justified. The numbers were concocted from the gloomiest assessments of the savings and new revenues Clinton’s budget plan would produce. The ad assumes that Clinton’s proposed child-care and education tax cuts won’t be enacted by Congress. And it assumes that Clinton would immediately seek new taxes, rather than spending cuts, if his budget projections proved inaccurate. Well schooled in the art of rapid response to GOP attacks, Clinton’s ad team, within hours, “went up” with an ad that quotes newspapers questioning the Bush spot.
But Clinton’s claim to the moral high ground was somewhat undercut by his own rhetoric: he’s used the same kind of creative math to predict that Bush, if re-elected, inevitably would slash social-security payments to pay for new tax cuts. Though one administration document mentions the possibility, Bush has repeatedly vowed not to touch social security. Another Clinton “response” ad contained some squishy specifies of its own. It says that Bush “doubled the beer tax and increased the gas tax”–a deal the Democratic Congress willingly supported.
There’s no doubt who really wants to raise taxes: it’s Perot. NEWSWEEK’S Poll shows that discussion of his budget platform won’t necessarily benefit him. Though some of his proposals are popular, like those that would raise tobacco taxes, others are wildly unpopular: raising taxes on some social-security benefits and increasing the gasoline tax. Perot’s own former top economic aide, John White, last week said he now was willing to advise Clinton. Perot seems ready to take the heat for his plan. “I am more than willing to go down in flames if the American people are too soft to face it,” he told ABC’s Barbara Walters.
Though they claimed not to be worried about Perot, the Clinton camp was far less eager than the Bush crowd to see him in the race. While Perot could carve up Bush, he could also undermine Clinton’s own credibility as a fiscally responsible “different kind of Democrat.” Before Perot’s announcement last week, two prominent Democratic senators, David Boren of Oklahoma and Lloyd Bentsen of Texas, repeatedly warned Perot that his entry could throw the election to Bush. Clinton himself, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, worried that Perot could hurt his chances for victory by dividing the anti-Bush vote. Inside the debate negotiations, it was the Bush camp that most strenuously insisted on language that would help guarantee Perot’s participation.
With Perot a fact of life, the Clintonians re paired to their Electoral College maps for reassurance. Though their man has lost some altitude, there are no more than four states (Indiana and Utah, South Carolina and Virginia) where Bush is considered to be comfortably ahead. While Bush advertises nationally, Clinton has the luxury of continuing to target 18 vote-rich states with tailored ads. He has yet to spend a penny on ads in California, where he holds what looks like an insurmountable lead. Perot’s presence makes Florida so competitive that Clinton and Al Gore have scheduled a bus tour there this week. “We’re going to continue to widen the playing field,” said Clinton campaign manager David Wilhelm.
The Bush campaign is hoping Perot will reduce Clinton’s margins in some Midwestern and Western states. But the president’s strategy is not so much geographical as psychological. Bush took heart from cheering crowds he saw on a recent train trip through Ohio and Michigan–a trip for which Baker had called out of retirement nearly every veteran GOP advance man of the last 20 years. Neither Bush nor Baker is ready to concede. They’ve adopted a psy-war strategy suggested by-who else?– Richard Nixon: a blitz, krieg of attack ads and reliance on the schedule of debates. And the Bush team is still hoping that a “trust” issue will surface and generate enough doubts about Clinton to slow him down. Perot, they figure, can shake up the race, but he can’t turn it upside down.
If the election were held today, whom would you vote for? CURRENT 36% Bush 44% Clinton 14% Perot SEPT. 25, 1992 37% Bush 46% Clinton 9% Perot Do you approve or disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job as president? 33% Approve 60% Disapprove For this NEWSWEEK Poll, The Gallup Organization telephoned 752 registered voters Oct. 1-2. Margin of error +/- 4 percentage points. “Don’t know” and other responses not shown, The NEWSWEEK POLL copyright 1992 by NEWSWEEK, Inc.
