Whom to Trust? What to Believe?

September-October 1996

WASHINGTON, D.C.—One of the chief difficulties with comparing President Bill Clinton and former Senator Bob Dole is that campaign rhetoric no longer tells us much about political reality.

Bill Clinton ran for president in 1992 as a New Democrat. He called for the downsizing of government and for something close to free markets, families first, and greater individual responsibility, none of which was strongly appealing to liberal Democrats. Once elected, however, he took a more traditional, liberal-Democratic approach to policy making. Then, after the 1994 Republican sweep of Congress, he began to move back toward his starting point.

Who then is the real Bill Clinton? Shall we judge him by his tax hikes, big-government attempt at health-care reform, and promotion of gay rights, or shall we imagine that in a second term Clinton will further shrink government, balance the budget by 2002, and continue to oppose the push for legalizing gay marriage?

And which Bob Dole shall we believe? Shall we trust his softening pro-life stance and his recent adoption of supply-side economics, with its big tax cuts ahead of spending cuts? Or shall we, instead, count on the Kansas Senator's long record as a pragmatic, budget-restraining, pro-life politician? And what about his long-term advocacy of big government support of farmers, large corporations, and Social Security? Did he undergo a true conversion just before the Republican convention, or has he simply adopted a short-term campaign strategy?

The question is this: shall we accept the words of the candidates at their face value and then work to expose the inner tensions and contradictions in their statements? (Critics from both sides say, for example, that the numbers in the Clinton and Dole budget proposals simply will not add up.) Or, instead, shall we admit that campaign rhetoric has little to do with reality and then make our own guesses as to how each candidate will act once in office?

The problem of cheap rhetoric is not new, of course, but it seems to grow more serious with each passing decade. It helps explain why so many eligible voters see the electoral process as a giant charade, why Ross Perot continues to attract many of the disaffected, and why more third parties are springing up.

The gap poses a particular problem for Dole's campaign. Almost everyone now accepts that Bill Clinton is a "slick Willie" with few qualms about speaking and doing contradictory things. But Dole's character is supposed to stand out in sharp contrast to Clinton's. How, then, are we to interpret Dole's actions when he begins to look like Clinton? You help us make the call.

—The Editor