Clinton Is Violating Public Trust, Dole Charges in Debate

Bob Dole opened his final debate with President Clinton Wednesday night with a sharp series of attacks on Clinton’s ethics and character, declaring that there is “a public trust, when you’re the president of the United States” and “right now, that trust is being violated.”

For the last several days, Dole has been promising his supporters that he would go more vigorously on the attack, and from the early moments of the debate, he proved he would do so. Even in response to an opening question from a San Diego-area teacher, who quoted a sixth-grade student about the need for Americans to unite and “stop fighting amongst ourselves,” Dole responded with a litany of charges against Clinton.

“No doubt about it that many Americans have lost their faith in government. They see ethical scandals in the White House today,” he said.

“When I am president of the United States I will keep my word,” Dole said. “My word is my bond.”

Dole did not let up from that point--using virtually every question in the early part of the debate to criticize one or the other part of Clinton’s record.

Clinton, for his part, largely ignored Dole’s statements. “The important thing is what are we going to do now?” he said at one point, brushing aside Dole’s charges about the health reform plan that the administration proposed in 1993.

In response to a question about the looming problems facing Social Security and Medicare when the baby boom generation begins to retire early in the next decade, Clinton and Dole both called for a bipartisan commission to recommend changes and “take it out of politics.”

But they differed sharply about the impact of Republican plans for Medicare in the last two years. Dole accused Clinton of running a fear campaign and misleading Americans by saying the Republicans tried to “cut” Medicare. For his part, Clinton quoted an American Hospital Assn. statement from last year that the Republican-proposed budget would have led to the closing of 700 hospitals.

The debate featured a “town hall format--instead of being questioned by moderator Jim Lehrer, as they were in their first encounter on Oct. 6--Dole and Clinton answered questions posed by members of the audience of uncommitted voters randomly selected by the Gallup Organization during interviews conducted between Oct. 9-12.

In all, 2,200 adults were interviewed, 800 met the qualifications and 180 accepted the invitation to take part in the debate audience. Of those, about 30% were truly undecided, said Lydia K. Saad, managing editor of the Gallup Poll, about one-third lean toward Dole, one-third toward Clinton and the remainder favor Reform Party candidate Ross Perot, who was excluded from both debates.

Earlier today, both Dole and Clinton visited the stage setup at the University of San Diego’s Shiley Theater, where the debate began at 6 p.m. PDT.

The Doles arrived at the private Catholic college first, in a black Cadillac limousine at 10 a.m. But someone had gotten to the neighborhood before them. On a hillside facing the university, across Tecolote Canyon, the name “Perot” had been etched into the sagebrush in multi-story-high block letters.

Leaving the theater after checking out the scene, the casually dressed candidate cracked: “Called it off. Can’t find a necktie.”

Asked what he planned to stress during the 90-minute town-hall style meeting here, Dole told reporters that “we’re going to talk about the future, people’s problems, how we’re going to solve them, how we’re going to address the problems.”

“It’ll be over before you know it,” he said.

Dole Optimistic

The final debate of the 1996 presidential election campaign was not a do-or-die event, Dole said. “No, we’re moving ahead,” he said. “The race is tightening up. We feel good about it. We’re happy to have the debate. We’d like to have more but they would only agree to two.”

Clinton’s aides were nervously optimistic about the impending matchup, which followed an earlier debate that a majority of viewers believed the president won. In addition, the San Diego “town hall” style format, featuring questions from regular citizens, offered the type of forum in which Clinton has excelled in the past.

Nelson Warfield, Dole’s press secretary, acknowledged the president’s advantage and went out of his way this week to lower expectations for his boss’ performance.

Town hall meetings are Clinton’s “preferred method of talking to the electorate,” Warfield said.

A volatile new element going into the debate was Dole’s expected plan to put a harsh spotlight on Clinton’s character and the ethical climate of his administration, building on an attack the former Kansas senator has mounted in the last few days.

The president’s GOP critics have raised questions about the White House use of FBI files, the possibility of future, Whitewater-related pardons and political contributions from wealthy Indonesians, among other matters.

Use of Negativity

For their part, the president’s advisors were hopeful that Dole--who polls show already is seen by many voters as too negative--would find it difficult to take that tack in Wednesday’s debate without alienating much of the audience inside the university’s Shiley Theater.

White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said earlier in the week that former Sen. George J. Mitchell of Maine, playing the part of Dole in debate practice, found it difficult not to “cross over that line” and appear personal in his attack.

“It’s very clear that Sen. Dole, in that format, sitting in front of citizens, will have a hard time going on the very negative attack without making it personal,” McCurry said.

After 10 days of increasing attacks on the president’s character, culminating in a scathing indictment a day earlier in which he charged that Clinton had besmirched the presidency, Dole predicted Wednesday that ethics “maybe” would make an appearance at the debate.

Seven hours before the debate commenced, Dole complained that “they don’t take [the ethics issue] seriously. That’s the trouble with this White House. They don’t take any of this seriously.”

Asked about the president’s goals in the debate, McCurry said: “To respond effectively to negative attacks by Sen. Dole--but move quickly to a positive agenda for the future, because that’s where the debate will be won or lost.”

Dole advisor Kenneth L. Khachigian said that Dole would be speaking to his conservative base Wednesday night during the course of the verbal duel. “We have to bring Republicans home,” Khachigian said. “We know that has been a weakness.”

Strategies on Hold

Both campaigns planned to make their final, strategic decisions on television advertising and travel after assessing the outcome of the debate.

Clinton’s team said they expected the local audience to focus more of its interest on such matters as immigration, rather than complex questions about campaign contributions that the Republicans have sought to highlight in recent days.

“We’re hoping [the immigration issue] will come up, because there is such a good story, particularly in San Diego where it is a great success story on immigration locally,” McCurry said.

Dole spent large portions of Tuesday and Wednesday preparing with the same team that had helped him before the first debate: Sheila Burke, Jim Ciccone, Margaret Tutwiler, Warfield, Dennis Shea and Tony Fabrizion.

While the two presidential candidates squared off in San Diego, Vice President Al Gore and his counterpart on the GOP ticket, Jack Kemp, each campaigned Wednesday in Tennessee.

Times staff writer Dave Lesher contributed to this story.