Clinton’s Ethics, Integrity Assailed by Dole in Debate

Republican Bob Dole, trailing badly with time running short, opened the final debate of the 1996 presidential campaign Wednesday night with a broad attack on President Clinton’s ethics and integrity, but seemed to hesitate in pressing his charges as the 90-minute encounter continued.

Getting scarcely a rise out of Clinton, the Republican challenger said the actions of the president and many of his subordinates had deepened public cynicism and debased the office of the president.

“There’s no doubt about it that many American people have lost their faith in government,” Dole said in response to a schoolteacher’s question about the values public figures impart to the nation’s children.

“They see scandals almost on a daily basis, they see ethical problems in the White House today,” said Dole, citing more than two dozen administration officials investigated or indicted and the case of 900 FBI files of former government officials improperly obtained by a White House aide.

Dole suggested repeatedly that Clinton had abandoned promises or adopted stands merely as election-year ploys to win votes. “When I’m president,” he insisted, “I will keep my word. My word is my bond.”

It was a carefully prepared set of attacks that Dole has been rehearsing all week, and it drew an equally well rehearsed response.

Clinton barely deigned to respond to Dole’s attacks, instead reminding the audience at the University of San Diego’s Shiley Theater of Republican efforts to cut popular government programs and of the economic progress made during his tenure.

In among those recitations, however, he twice responded with a line that expressed more sorrow than anger at Dole’s charges.

“I don’t want to respond in kind to all these things,” Clinton said halfway through the debate, sounding almost indulgent of his older opponent. “I could. I could answer a lot of these things tit for tat. But I hope we can talk about what we’re going to do in the future. No attack ever created a job or educated a child or helped a family make ends meet. No insult ever cleaned up a toxic waste dump or helped an elderly person.

As the debate went on, Dole’s fire grew less sustained--deterred, perhaps, by Clinton’s unwillingness to engage in an exchange on ethics and morality as well as the tone, substance and town-hall format of the questioning.

‘His Word’

Eleven times Dole referred to “his word” being more trustworthy than the president’s, but at times, his ripostes seemed almost cryptic.

In response to a question about the millions of Americans alienated by the political process, for example, Dole said he knew of no perfect solution to the problem of low voter participation. Then he added, almost as an aside: “Campaign finance [reform] might help, might help contributions coming in from Indonesia or other foreign countries, rich people in those countries, and then being sent back after the L.A. Times discovers it--$250,000.”

Dole did not explain his reference, but was apparently referring to a campaign contribution to the Democratic National Committee by Cheong Am Business Group, a South Korean company. The DNC refunded the money when The Times inquired about it. Cheong Am, because it earned no income in the United States, was not qualified to contribute to American political campaigns.

But Clinton did not respond to Dole’s assertion and the matter did not come up again.

Early on in the debate, a young woman undergraduate at UC-San Diego asked Dole a question that many voters appear to have in their minds--whether, at age 73, he could relate to the concerns of young people. In one of his defter responses, he said he thought his age gave him an advantage.

Formula for Wisdom

“You know, wisdom comes from age, experience and intelligence. And if you have some of each--and I have some age, some experience and some intelligence--that adds up to wisdom,” he said to gentle laughter from the audience.

Clinton replied that he didn’t think his opponent was too old to be president. “It’s the age of his ideas that I question,” Clinton said.

Both candidates went out of their way to address California concerns, exchanging differing views on the California ballot initiative on affirmative action and the condition of California’s economy.

Dole noted that thousands of high-paying manufacturing jobs had been lost during Clinton’s presidency and that California had been particularly hard hit by cutbacks in defense spending. But he gave Clinton a huge opening when he claimed that the last four years had produced “the worst economy in a century.”

“If you believe that the California economy was better in 1992 than it is today, you should vote for Bob Dole,” Clinton responded.

Both Against Quotas

On affirmative action, both men asserted that they did not favor numerical quotas for members of minority groups. Clinton, however, said he continued to favor “the right kind of affirmative action” programs--ones that he said would “give people a chance to prove that they are qualified.”

He said that he opposed the ballot initiative, Proposition 209, noting twice that retired Gen. Colin L. Powell agrees with him.

Dole said he supported the initiative, which would end government-sponsored affirmative action programs. In response to the question of whether the country had arrived at a point where it is free of discrimination, Dole said that “we may not be there,” but “we’re not going to get there by giving preferences and quotas.”

He noted that he had supported affirmative action in the past, but he said he had determined that government programs primarily helped a privileged few “who had the money” anyway.

Discord Over Gays

On another issue of discrimination, Clinton said he supported legislation that would protect gay men and lesbians from discrimination on the job. Dole declined to support the legislation, saying he supported equal treatment, but not special rights for particular groups.

One of the sharpest splits between the two candidates came over the issue of how tightly the federal government should regulate the sale of tobacco.

Asked by Oscar Delgado, a self-described former “pack-plus-a-day man,” whether he would recant a previous statement he made questioning whether nicotine was addictive, Dole quickly brushed the issue aside. He went on to lament the growing use of drugs by young people, a theme with which he has attacked Clinton for weeks.

“I was asked a technical question--are they addictive?” Dole said of his statement this summer in which he questioned whether nicotine is addictive. “They probably are addictive,” he said Wednesday night, in what seemed like a partial correction. “I don’t know, I’m not a doctor.”

Quick Counterpunch

Clinton lost no time in firing back, calling their positions on the tobacco issue “one of the biggest differences between Sen. Dole and me.”

“No president had ever taken on the tobacco lobby before,” Clinton told the audience. “I did. Sen. Dole opposed me. He went down and made a speech . . . saying that I did the wrong thing. I think I did the right thing.”

Dole accused Clinton of cutting too much. Clinton countered “there’s less than 1% difference between my budget and the Republican budget on defense.”

In fact there is relatively little difference between what the two advocate on the subject. Clinton wants to cut more now and restore some later; Dole wants to cut less now and pare some later on.

Hits Health Overhaul

On domestic issues, Dole repeatedly reminded listeners about perhaps Clinton’s greatest policy and political failure--health care reform.

“Don’t forget what he tried to do with health care,” Dole said, reciting--sometimes inflating--figures thrown out by opponents of the health plan. “Seventeen new taxes. Spend $1.5 trillion. Fifty new bureaucracies. Can you believe that?”

“We have the best health care delivery system in the world, and we want to keep it that way,” the Republican candidate said, warning that if Clinton is reelected, he might try his plan again.

Clinton defended his plan as one that would have cut medical costs “way below the rate of inflation.” In the absence of overall national health reform, he said, the government should extend health care coverage to more people, provide more preventive care and protect people whose insurance may have lapsed because they are between jobs.

The two also disagreed over the Family and Medical Leave Act, which Clinton signed early in his tenure. The law forbids companies with more than 50 workers to fire an employee if he or she takes time off for family problems, such as a child’s illness. Clinton said he hoped if reelected to expand the law. Dole repeated his opposition to it, saying he preferred giving companies a tax credit to ease the burden of paying for replacement workers to fill in for those who take time off.

Over the last four years, Clinton said, medical care costs of 1 million addition have been met by Medicaid, which pays the medical costs of poor people. Also, he said, under legislation sponsored by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Nancy Kassebaum (R-Kan.) that he signed into law this summer, 25 million people will continue to receive health insurance when they change jobs.

Dole said that while managed care programs may be “part of the answer,” the government should service coverage because “then I think we’ve taken a giant step backward in the United States of America.”

By coincidence, the debate closed with questions from two ministers, who asked about promoting tolerance and religious values.

Clinton spoke in his customary programmatic way about proposals he had supported to permit voluntary prayer in school, to permit parents to regulate their childrens’ television viewing and to keep drugs out of schools.

But Dole, knowing that time was short in the campaign and aware that his prospects were difficult, responded in an almost fatalistic way.

“You know, before I came in tonight, my wife and daughter and I had a prayer because if it’s God’s will, whatever happens, if it’s God’s will, it will happen,” he said.

Then, in his closing remarks, the former Senate leader, a 35-year master of the legislative process, sounded an almost valedictory note.

After reminding viewers of his impoverished upbringing and the debilitating war wound to his right arm, he said that the campaign was not about two individuals, but about “the process” of selecting a president.

“And I would just say, with my time running out here, it’s a very proud moment for me. And what I want the voters to do is to make a decision. And I want them to be proud of their vote in the years ahead, proud that they voted for the right candidate, proud that they voted, hopefully, for me,” Dole said.

“And I’ll just make you one promise. My word is good. Democrats and Republcians have said Bob Dole’s word is good. I keep my word.”

Broder reported from Washington and La Ganga from San Diego. Times staff writers Art Pine and James Gerstenzang in Washington and Jonathan Peterson and Dave Lesher in San Diego contributed to this story.

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What They Asked

The town hall-style debate featured questions on the following topics:

# of questions

Jobs/taxes/economy: 4

Affirm. action/gay rights: 3

Characater: 2

Health care/smoking: 2

Family leave: 1

Foreign affairs: 1

Military: 1

Politics: 1

Social Security: 1

Welfare: 1

Youth vote/age: 1