Bush Need Not Exploit Clinton’s Flaws to Win

Bill Clinton’s spin doctors diagnose his New York primary victory as proof positive that their candidate is alive and well. I say they’re setting themselves up for a malpractice suit.

Political spin doctors are like the carnival hucksters who dare you to guess which walnut shell the coin is under. They only succeed when they draw your eye off their hand movements. That’s what Clinton’s spinners have done with New York, urging us to concentrate on why Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr.’s upset sputtered.

That’s not where to look. Instead: Why couldn’t Clinton win more than 41% in the Democratic primary?

If you know where to look, Clinton’s political liabilities were astonishingly clear in the roller-coaster ride leading up to Tuesday’s vote. Forget about character issues and concentrate on the limitations revealed by Clinton’s campaign.

Liability No. 1 : Clinton’s campaign message is too narrow. More so than New Hampshire, the Super Tuesday states or any other primary to date (with the possible exception of Florida, where Clinton failed to show strongly), New York epitomizes the challenges a presidential candidate faces in a national campaign. In New York, the electorate’s diversity only slightly exaggerates our national mosaic.

To win New York, a campaign needs more than a single message. It needs an overarching message, but also lots of messages for specific communities, from black, Latino and Jewish voters to white ethnics, union households, upscale suburbanites and upstate Yankees.

New York presages Clinton’s challenge in trying to win a majority in enough states to give him 270 electoral college votes. So far, he does best where the electorate is more homogeneous. Kansas Democrats, for example, gave Clinton a bare majority, with 51%. But in Wisconsin, with its divergent ethnic groups around Milwaukee, and in New York, Clinton couldn’t win a majority. That’s because his campaign has yet to develop effective messages to target distinct voter coalitions.

Liability No. 2 : Clinton is not a cool contestant. The press and the public rightly worry about presidential temperament. Edmund S. Muskie shedding tears, or Bob Dole asking George Bush to stop lying about his campaign suggests shades of temperament under pressure that make voters uncomfortable. It makes people wonder whether that candidate would keep cool in a crisis, or overreact.

Twice now, Clinton has displayed a hot streak on national television. He did it first in a debate with Brown while defending his wife from allegations that her law firm benefited from state contracts in Arkansas. Just before the New York primary, Clinton did it again by gripping Brown’s arm so tightly during a hot exchange in a joint interview that Brown winced in pain and had to pull away. Despite her apology, Hillary Clinton’s inappropriate inference about the President’s alleged extramarital sex life shows this hot streak may be a trait the couple share. These incidents suggest that the Clintons will react poorly under the intense pressure of the fall campaign.

Liability No. 3 : Clinton is too slick for comfort. Clinton’s negatives keep escalating. The issues aren’t marital fidelity, smoking pot or draft-dodging. They’re the honesty and integrity of Clinton’s answers. The moniker “Slick Willie” was coined in Arkansas, and didn’t square with the image many voters got early in the campaign of an earnest governor out to give straight answers about the country’s problems. Now Clinton has given evidence that he was nicknamed well.

Nor are the issues behind him. There are still contradictions in the draft story that are sure to be probed in detail before the fall campaign ends. And Clinton still faces the treatment Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg got when he was nominated to the Supreme Court. Some reporter will track down Clinton’s Oxford buddies to find out whether he really did or didn’t inhale.

Do these issues matter? The last politician to be elected President with a nasty moniker was Richard M. (Tricky Dick) Nixon. Watergate was a generation ago, but one thing is sure--Clinton can’t credibly campaign like Jimmy Carter did, promising he’ll never lie.

This is all good news for the GOP, but doesn’t mean the election is over. The Bush camp must guard against complacency. Clinton has already beaten the odds for surviving campaign scandals, and will be a formidable contender.

The best way to blow the reelection is to run a purely negative campaign hammering on Clinton’s liabilities. The voters have been telling us in ’92 that they’re tired of politics-as-usual, with negative ads and character attacks. Clinton is already hurt; for the GOP to pile on will look like wanton butchery.

What Bush should do is take the high road by declaring that Clinton’s character is off-limits, limiting the debate to the candidates’ respective track records and policies. If Bush runs a substantive campaign against Clinton, he will own the high ground in this election. That not only takes votes away from Clinton, but also H. Ross Perot.