Portsmouth Herald
CLINTON FACES MINEFIELD IN '96 CAMPAIGN
CHARACTER ISSUES, BUDGET BATTLES SHAPE CANDIDATE
By Larissa Pawula, Herald Staff,01/18/96
> 
> Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of articles profiling the major
> candidates in the N.H. presidential primary. The articles will run Thursdays
> and Sundays before the Feb. 20 election.
> 
>    Like the blanket of snow that crippled the nation's capital last week, an
> avalanche of negative publicity may ice the highest approval rating President
> Clinton has seen in three years, just as his re-election campaign workers are
> trying to spread the word about what they see as the administration's long
> list of accomplishments.
>    Some non-partisan, albeit cautious, political watchdogs, however, predict
> the president stands a good chance of re-election.
>    To hold his office, according to political analysts, Clinton has to focus
> on the positives, and maneuver through the character issue minefield that has
> plagued him since he first ran for the 1992 Democratic nomination here in New
> Hampshire. For all the image problems plaguing both the president and first
> lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Republicans are grappling with an image problem of their own.
> They are fighting the perception that they advocate cuts to Medicare and
> Medicaid, an issue the Clinton campaign has focused on.
>    Proposed deep cuts in once-sacred entitlements have painted the GOP as the
> enemy of the working poor and the elderly.
>    ``I think his chances got better this fall, when the poll numbers stopped
> hemorrhaging,'' said Professor Linda Fowler at Dartmouth College. Fowler is
> the director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for the Social Sciences.
>    ``On the other hand, another thing that helps is that the public's
> disapproval of Republicans is rising rapidly,'' she said.
>    Douglas Madsen, professor of political science at the University of Iowa
> in Iowa City, described the return road to the White House as one filled with
> time bombs.
>    ``If snipers start picking off American troops, he will have hell to pay.
> Everything hangs on people getting killed or not getting killed,'' Madsen
> said.
>    ``They're emphasizing the positives, but many of these accomplishments are
> out of (Clinton's) control,'' Madsen said. ``We don't know what will happen
> in Bosnia, with interest rates, with the Whitewater case. He doesn't have a
> lot of control over his own fate.
>    ``He has a reasonable chance, but there are no guarantees. Four years ago,
> he came in with 43 percent of the vote, and Ross Perot isn't running this
> year to split the vote,'' Madsen said. 
> 
> Accentuate the positive
>    Here on the Seacoast, both Mrs. Clinton and Vice President Al Gore
> received a warm welcome during recent visits.
>    The Clintons made a lot of friends here during the campaign before the
> 1992 first-in-the-nation presidential primary, said Portsmouth Democratic
> activist Anita Freedman.
>    Freedman said Gore did a good job of telling members of the Greater
> Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce recently about the administration's
> accomplishments. She said the media has to help convince the rest of the
> state and the nation that the president has done a commendable job,
> considering the stonewalling by the Republican Congress.
>    ``I think people are fed up with the Republicans,'' said Freedman after
> hearing Gore's speech Jan. 5. ``The only thing I have on my agenda is to get
> the president re-elected.'' 
> Improving economy
>    Madsen said the president can take credit for improving the economy, and
> should capitalize on his image as a ``white knight'' protecting the poor and
> elderly.
>    ``We've had an expansion of our job base. He'll protect against Draconian
> cuts to entitlement programs, and he's for education and the environment,''
> Madsen said. ``That's the whole campaign.''
>    Between 1992 and today, New Hampshire's unemployment rate has decreased
> from 7.6 percent to 4 percent, 37,300 new jobs were created, and bankruptcy
> filings have decreased 8 percent after increasing 47 percent annually during
> the previous four years.
>    Under the Clinton administration's proposed budget, the deficit will be
> lowered by more than $1 trillion over seven years. The president's economic
> strategy has cut the deficit for three years in a row - for the first time
> since Harry Truman was president, 
> according to the Clinton/Gore campaign.
>    Depending upon the outcome of U.S. involvement in Bosnia, Clinton may be
> able to position himself as a leader in foreign policy. The administration
> has already shown foreign policy leadership elsewhere, in Northern Ireland,
> Bosnia, North Korea, Haiti, Israel and Jordan, and in the former Soviet
> Union.
>    Government costs less now that it did four years ago, Gore said during his
> recent appearance in Portsmouth.
>    To underscore his point, Gore held up a stapler that four years ago cost
> the taxpayers $54 because of massive red tape and inefficient procurement
> methods.
>    That same stapler costs taxpayers about $4, said Gore, since an overhaul
> of the way the government buys goods and services.
>    The federal work force has been cut by more than 160,000 jobs, more than
> 16,000 pages of obsolete regulations have been abolished, and $70 million
> will be saved through 180 money-saving recommendations, Gore said. More than
> 280 federal advisory committees have been eliminated.
>    The Clinton administration can claim credit for the Family Leave Act,
> increased funding for AIDS outpatient care, breast cancer research, and
> health care benefits for veterans.
>    The administration is also taking credit for opening foreign markets to
> American goods through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA),
> signed into law in 1993, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
> (GATT) instituted a year later. 
> 
> The character issue
>    When all those accomplishments are stacked up, though, a question remains:
> Is Bill Clinton a stand-up, honest, ethical kind of guy?
>    ``Right now it looks pretty grim, but Americans forget things in a
> hurry,'' Madsen said, using the O.J. Simpson case as an example of a case
> that once hypnotized the nation but now receives much less attention.
>    The question of character hit Clinton four years ago when Gennifer Flowers
> told tabloid newspapers of her alleged affair with Clinton when he was the
> governor of Arkansas.
>    Then, Clinton was accused of being a draft dodger because as a college
> student, he got a student deferment and studied in England as a Rhodes
> scholar and protested against the Vietnam War.
>    When someone asked him if he'd ever smoked marijuana, he told a skeptical
> audience that he puffed on a joint, but didn't inhale.
>    Early in his presidency, both the president and first lady were under
> scrutiny for appearing less than forthright during an investigation into
> their roles in the Whitewater land deal, and for apparently withholding
> documents after former White House legal 
> counselor Vincent Foster committed suicide. Both Clintons still face
> questions regarding Whitewater.
>    Four years ago, Mrs. Clinton stood by her man and helped him into the
> White House. She might be less useful to her husband now, say some analysts,
> that her own credibility is under attack by former members of the White House
> travel office, who claim the she played a larger role in firings at the
> office than she admitted.
>    ``The Clintons together are facing big problems in the character issue.
> That's where they've been vulnerable. They climbed out of it together, during
> the Gennifer Flowers episode, but he did it with Hillary Clinton's help,''
> said Madsen.
>    ``Without her help, Bill Clinton wouldn't have been a `comeback'
> anybody.''
>    
> Competition question
>    Without any serious Democratic contender, it appears Clinton's biggest
> competition might be Republican Sen. Bob Dole.
>    Madsen said Dole is ``looking better and better'' by taking a position
> between House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Clinton on the budget stalemate. And
> Dole, as a war veteran, appears strong on the character issue.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> VITAL STATISTICS
> President Bill Clinton
>    Age: 49
>    Born on August 19, 1946 in Hope, Arkansas.
>    Family: Wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, age 48, and one daughter, Chelsea,
> 15.
>    
>    Bill Clinton is the 42nd president of the United States. He was sworn in
> on January 20, 1993.
>    Elected attorney general of Arkansas in 1976, President Clinton ran for
> governor two years later and won, and the people of Arkansas re-elected him
> four more times. He served as governor longer than all of this predecessors
> except one.
>    He has served as the National Governor's Association, the Education
> Commission of the States, the Lower Mississippi Delta Development Commission,
> the Southern Growth Policies Board, the Democratic Governors' Association,
> and the Democratic Leadership Council.
>    A fifth generation Arkansan, he spent the first years of his life in Hope
> then moved with his family to Hot Springs, where he graduated from high
> school.
>    Clinton earned a bachelor's degree from Georgetown University in 1968 and
> a law degree from Yale Law School in 1973. He also studied at Oxford
> University as a Rhodes Scholar from 1968 to 1970.
>    The president was an attorney in private practice in Little Rock from 1981
> to 1982 and has also served on the law school faculty at the University of
> Arkansas at Fayetteville.
>    He is an avid reader, enjoys jogging and golf and occasionally plays the
> saxophone. 
> 
> 
> ON THE ISSUES  
> 
>    - Abortion
>    The president said he believes that abortions should be safe, legal and
> rare.
>    He has consistently opposed late-term abortions except when necessary to
> protect the life or health of the mother. He strongly supported efforts to
> reduce the number of abortions by increasing support for adoption and
> reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies.
>    ``Our own policy in the United States is that this should be a matter of
> personal choice, not public dictation,'' Clinton said.  
> 
>    - Affirmative Action
>    The president said affirmative action can help expand economic and
> educational opportunities, but that it should be consistent with our ideals
> of personal responsibility and merit. He said he does not believe in a quota
> system, and is firmly against reverse 
> discrimination.
>    ``I am directing all our agencies to comply with the Supreme Court's
> Adarand decision, and also to apply the four standards of fairness to all our
> affirmative action programs that I have already articulated: No quotas in
> theory or practice; no illegal 
> discrimination of any kind, including reverse discrimination of any kind; no
> preference for people who are not qualified for any job or other opportunity;
> and as soon as a program has succeeded, it must be retired. Any program that
> doesn't meet these four principles must be eliminated or reformed to meet
> them.
>    ``But let me be clear: Affirmative action has been good for America.
> Affirmative action has not always been perfect, and affirmative action should
> not go on forever. We should have a simple slogan: Amend it, but don't end
> it,'' Clinton said.
>    
>    - The budget
>    Clinton has agreed to balance the budget in seven years, but said he wants
> to do it in a way that protects older Americans, education, the environment,
> and gives tax relief to working families. The president has cut the growth of
> the federal deficit, and has reduced the deficit in each of the three years
> he has held office.
>    ``I want a leaner, not meaner government, that's back on the side of
> hard-working Americans. A new government for the new economy - creative,
> flexible, high quality, low cost, service oriented - just like our most
> innovative private companies,'' he said.
>    
>   -l Term limits
>    Clinton has consistently opposed term limits.
>    
>    - Welfare reform
>    Clinton said he believes in creating a welfare reform system that
> reinforces basic American values - work, responsibility, family. Clinton said
> those who can work should work. He is encouraging and rewarding working
> families through tax breaks, and is enacting programs to promote parental
> responsibility.
>    Since being in office, Clinton has granted 35 states welfare waivers to
> help move people off welfare and to work - more waivers than were granted by
> the Bush and Reagan administration combined, according to the Clinton/Gore
> campaign.
>    
>    - Entitlement programs
>    Clinton said he supports reform in programs without cutting crucial
> assistance to children, the elderly, or low-income families. He has created
> block grants in some states for transportation, but said he is concerned
> about the impact block grants for Medicare and welfare would have on
> children.
>    
>    - Bosnia
>    Clinton said the United States has a moral obligation to help the people
> of Bosnia secure their own peace. He has sent 20,000 troops to Bosnia, but
> defined mission as ``limited, focused and achievable.'' Risks to American
> troops should be minimal, and troops have been given the right to respond
> with force to any threat to their personal safety.
>    Clinton has stated that American troops will leave Bosnia if peace breaks
> down.
>    
>   -l Involvement in United Nations
>    Clinton said he supports a reformed and more efficient United Nations that
> meets the needs of the post-Cold War world. In partnership with the United
> States and member nations, Clinton said he believes that the United Nations
> can fulfill its historic mission 
> to promote peace and international stability.
>    
>    - Campaign finance reform
>    Clinton said he supports campaign finance reforms designed to limit the
> influence of large contributors in political campaigns. He said he has
> enforced tough lobbying disclosure rules, enacted tough ethics guidelines for
> administration officials, and worked to enact the gift ban.
> 
>    - Crime
>    Clinton signed the 1994 crime bill, which was designed to place an
> additional 100,000 new police officers on the streets, prevent criminals from
> getting guns, and provide tough penalties for criminals, making ``three
> strikes and you're out'' the law of the land.
>    ``Unless we deal with the ravages of crime and drugs and violence and
> unless we recognize that it's due to the breakdown of the family, the
> community, and the disappearance of jobs, and unless we say some of this
> cannot be done by government because we have to reach deep inside to the
> values, the spirit, the soul, and the truth of human nature, none of the
> other things we seek to do will ever take us where we need to go,'' Clinton
> said at the Convocation of the Church of God in Christ in Memphis, Tenn., on
> Nov. 13, 1993.
>    
>    - Federal gun control
>    Clinton signed the Brady Bill, which requires background checks and a
> five-day waiting period for handgun purchasers. Clinton also signed the
> assault weapons ban, which prohibits the manufacture and sale of 19
> military-style assault weapons and certain high-capacity ammunition
> magazines. The law protects a hunter's rights by exempting over 650 hunting
> rifles from the ban.