The Comical Issues of Dole’s Campaign

At first, I thought the huge inflated elephant perched on top of my hotel was part of the comic book convention being held in San Diego last weekend. But no, it was sitting there all by its lonesome in anticipation of the Republicans coming to town next month. There will be a Republican convention, I can reliably report; the rooms have been booked.

That’s a good thing because our system of government requires electoral competition. For a while, I was worried that the Republicans wouldn’t be able to put on a show. Their presidential candidate excites no one except possibly his wife, the party is hopelessly divided on the social issues, the public’s interest in foreign policy is now reserved for alien invasions and the economic news has not been better in 20 years.

This last had to come as particularly depressing news for the Dole campaign. Unemployment, it was announced last week, is at a six-year low, and inflation is running a modest 3%. The so-called misery index, the combination of inflation and unemployment rates, is at its lowest level in almost 30 years. In June, hourly wages recorded the largest increase in the 31 years that the statistic has been kept.

Most people clearly are better off than they were when Clinton was elected, and the latest reports on consumer confidence, 50% higher than four years ago, confirms that. The Democrats are supposed to screw up the economy, not make it better, but Slick Willie, as his detractors like to call him, pulled one off. The son of a gun taxed the rich and “growed the economy,” and they said it couldn’t be done.

It wasn’t expected to work that way, according to the supply-siders who predicted a depression and a runaway deficit when Clinton and a Congress still controlled by Democrats bumped the highest tax bracket. Sorry, but the deficit has been cut in half, and 10 million more jobs were created. I wouldn’t want to have to compare those stats with the Reagan-Bush red ink record.

With the economic news being so good, what are the Republicans to do? They could run against sin, as they have been doing for the past 20 years, but Dole is wary of playing that card. Too many Americans have lived lives outside of the norms dictated by the puritanical right. They have had premarital sex and may even know some worthwhile person who chose to have an abortion. Although Dole has shamefully exploited the abortion issue throughout his political career, he is now eager to distance himself from the right-to-lifers.

The only immorality that the majority of voters, particularly those jaded baby boomers, will recognize is that associated with poor women. That’s why Dole railed against welfare and “illegitimate” children again last week. The fact that the fetus is legitimate until brought to term by a welfare mother is a deeply felt article of faith among Republicans. But Clinton has stolen this issue from the Republicans by being just as good a welfare basher. Who needs “welfare reform” when you have a president who has approved 40 states’ requests to further impoverish the poor?

Oh well, but what about those FBI files? Forget it. Dole was the chairman of the Republican Party during Watergate, and you don’t have to be an advertising genius to imagine the commercials the Democrats can come up with based on old news footage. Dole is on the record during the Nixon years apologizing for a president who tried to get the FBI and the CIA to cover up an invasion of the opposition party’s headquarters. Compared to that, the antics of the juvenile delinquents at work in the Clinton White House will seem like nothing more than goofy child’s play.

In the end, the Republicans will run against Hillary, because that is all they’ve got. Their hope is that there are still enough of us who are threatened by uppity women to swing an election. We never will figure out what she did down there in Arkansas with those banks, but we’re damn angry that our wives weren’t able to pull off something like that. Also, she forgives her husband for stuff that most of us couldn’t get away with.

But the attempt to make Hillary the target won’t work because even angry white men know that Hillary is not the president, and besides, deep down they wish they were married to her. In the end, angry white men and social conservatives will vote their pocketbooks, and this year, that means the Democratic Party. Back at the comic book convention, even Homer Simpson could have predicted that.