To Sling Mud or Not to Sling Mud: Daunting Dilemma

As recently as a few weeks ago, Democratic presidential candidate Bill Bradley was being strongly urged to stop playing politics so cleanly. Campaign analysts encouraged Bradley to speak bluntly about Vice President Al Gore’s lack of qualification for promotion. Voters might pay lip service to a White House wannabe who confines remarks to the issues, but they pay attention to plain talk about an opponent.

Bradley resisted. He prided himself on not making personal attacks. The former basketball player avoided playing hardball, even while Gore was scoring direct hits against him with comments that “crossed the line,” as Bradley expressed with visible frustration back in late November.

He reiterated at the time that if a candidate maintained a positive vision, the need for negative campaigning was unnecessary.

By the eve of Tuesday’s presidential primary in New Hampshire, however, it was Bradley who had come under fire for playing dirty, for making his opposition to Gore far too harsh for the good of the party. A joint statement was issued by two prominent Democratic legislators, one of them Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.), minority leader of the House, mere days before the primary, imploring Bradley to “abandon negative, personal attacks.”

This was the same Dick Gephardt who, just last October, was quoted in a national magazine as having told a colleague, “You’ve got to do what you need to get reelected,” in a quest to seize control of the House from the Republicans next fall.

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Whichever legitimate candidates remain standing in the major parties’ campaigns--come the March 7 primaries here in California as well as in New York, Ohio and Georgia--are sure to be caught in the very same cross-fire. To be a dirty campaigner or not to be, that is the perception. That is the line candidates must too often cross if they are to separate themselves from other faces in the crowd.

The campaign’s nobodies and near-nobodies went to New Hampshire with delusions of grandeur. Among them was Gary Bauer, an invisible man who somehow persuaded himself that Republicans would take a shine to him in such a way that George W. Bush, Steve Forbes and John McCain would topple like dominoes. Bauer gave voters something Monday to remember him by, flipping a flapjack at a pancake-making contest so ineptly that he fell backward off the stage, trying to catch it in his pan.

Although he never made it to the maple syrup, Bauer did take first prize as the primary’s top sap.

There were certainly indications Tuesday that the Republican nomination in 2000 is far from Bush’s for the asking, that McCain, who gave the brushoff to last month’s Iowa caucuses, plainly has found an audience. A candidate who does so well in New Hampshire is likely to still be running strong by California’s primary.

Then again, never forget that Bill Clinton was defeated in New Hampshire’s 1992 Democratic primary by Paul Tsongas, who was rarely seen or heard from again.

McCain isn’t afraid to be outspoken--after all, this is a guy who once referred to actor Leonardo DiCaprio as “an androgynous wimp”--and he certainly doesn’t fear mixing it up with Bush whenever necessary. In a recent debate, when Bush charged that the two people who have openly criticized his platform on education were McCain and their Democratic nemesis, the vice president, McCain bristled.

The zinger he gave back to Bush was: “If you’re saying that I’m like Al Gore, then you’re spinning like Bill Clinton.”

Such a riposte hardly qualifies as a personal attack, though. And that is what Bradley was accused of, going too far in condemning Gore’s character as the New Hampshire primary drew near. Political allies of Gore expressed concern that Bradley’s can of worms could be reopened later by Republicans, when it would be their turn to do whatever it took to defeat a Democrat.

It’s the vicious circle: Play fair, people will tell you it’s important to win. Play to win, people will tell you it’s important to play fair.

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So why the flip-flop? Why, after a long holdout, did Bradley go after Gore the way he did?

Back when he was at Princeton, there was a story Bradley heard about a physics exam that Albert Einstein once gave to a class of Princeton graduate students. A student said, “Professor Einstein, the questions on this year’s exam are the same as the questions on last year’s exam.”

Einstein supposedly replied, “That’s all right. This year, the answers are different.”

Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He can be reached at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053, or by phone at (213) 237-7366.