Character Still Counts, but It’s No Slam-Dunk

In 1976, Jimmy Carter was elected president after famously promising that he would never lie to the American people.

His image of honesty and decency was a stark contrast to the disgraced President Nixon, and Carter’s victory was broadly seen as a direct result of the Watergate scandal.

With that history as a guide, and President Clinton’s impeachment as a lead-in, it would seem that the 2000 presidential campaign similarly will revolve around issues such as personal conduct, morality--even marital fidelity. After all, Clinton’s sexual misadventures have posed the gravest threat to a president since Watergate forced Nixon to resign a generation ago.

But, in the odd way that the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal has defied just about every other expectation, there is a growing consensus that no candidate should count on winning the White House next year simply by running as the purist of the pack.

“Certainly, a lot of Jimmy Carter’s appeal, by saying, ‘I’ll never lie to you,’ was suggesting, ‘I’m not Richard Nixon,’ ” said James Pfiffner, a government professor at Virginia’s George Mason University. “An element of that is likely in 2000. People will be looking for someone straightforward, with upright character. But that won’t be the only thing you need to get elected.”

If anything, strategists in both parties agreed, the greater risk is alienating voters by focusing too much on Clinton’s foibles and the president’s contested character, in effect running as the “anti-Clinton.”

“You better be addressing the problems of America--not the problems of Washington,” warned Mike McKeon, a bipartisan political pollster in Joliet, Ill.

For Republicans, the dilemma is acute. No one is predicting any lack of debate about character in the 2000 campaign or shortage of potshots aimed at the president. Indeed, the party’s most ardent activists and reliable voters have been the driving force behind efforts to oust Clinton. At the same time, however, polls have consistently shown that the more aggressively Republicans pursue the president, the more put off the general public becomes--and the worse the party’s image gets.

“Voters are going to be looking at character as they choose a candidate next year,” GOP strategist Dan Schnur said. “The biggest challenge for candidates is to play the card without beating voters over the head with it.”

With the spectacle of the president on trial in the Senate, several Republican hopefuls have used the opportunity to weigh in, or at least take a poke at, Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic front-runner and one of Clinton’s most loyal defenders.

Former Vice President Dan Quayle vowed to make the scandal a major issue in 2000: “Gore’s wrapped up in it,” he said recently. Others similarly have sought to reconfigure the Clinton scandal to implicate Gore.

“There is a line between loyalty and being an apologist for unacceptable conduct,” said former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander, another of the GOP contenders, as he took the first formal step to enter the race earlier this month. “The vice president will have to defend his position in the year 2000, just as [Nixon’s vice president and successor] Gerald Ford had to in 1976.”

Unlike Watergate, however, which involved a far-reaching cover-up and systemic abuse of such government agencies as the FBI, the Lewinsky affair--rightly or wrongly--is widely perceived as a more modest and personal misstep.

In the scheme of scandals, this one is generally seen as “uniquely, sexually idiosyncratic,” said James Pinkerton, a Georgetown University professor and GOP pundit. “Clinton hasn’t tainted Democrats along with him.”

Still, Clinton’s conduct has raised to new heights the so-called character issue, a staple of presidential campaigns since Gary Hart’s Democratic presidential candidacy collapsed in 1987 amid allegations of adultery.

“Candidates’ pasts are going to be scrutinized this election more than any other election in American history,” said Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for Alexander’s campaign. “The question is how the American people will respond to that.”

For the last year, polls have consistently found support for Clinton surging with each step that moves him closer to formal sanction--with his political opponents suffering the consequences. The backlash has left many Republicans keenly sensitive to image and tone as the 2000 campaign gets underway and the inevitable debate about character begins.

Ron Kaufman, a former White House political aide to President Bush and an informal advisor to Bush’s son, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, said Republicans must strive to seem moral without being moralistic, uplifting without appearing intolerant.

“It’s bigger than, ‘Have you ever committed adultery?’ ” Kaufman suggested. “People are looking for a moral compass, but they want a president who will lead by example, not speak to them in a preachy way.”

Eddie Mahe, a veteran GOP strategist long associated with conservative causes, agreed. “We’re not electing a keeper of the public morality. People will want someone to be proud of and see as a role model. Not someone to tell us what to do.”

For some, however, the very notion of looking to Washington, much less any politician, for moral guidance is almost absurd on its face. Far from a summons to higher ground, the Lewinsky affair is widely seen outside the Beltway “as the culmination of how out of touch, self-involved, self-absorbed and unaware of the rest of the country Washington has become,” said Paul Maslin, a California-based Democratic pollster.

The mixture of apathy and indifference, even downright cynicism, that has greeted the Clinton scandal suggests how much attitudes have changed over the quarter century since Watergate.

“It’s not as simple anymore as saying, ‘I’m honest, I have integrity,’ or, ‘I’ll never lie to you,’ ” Maslin observed. “Jimmy Carter saying exactly what he did back in ‘75, ‘76, wouldn’t succeed in this environment. People are just too skeptical.”