Clinton's Campaign Acrobatics

...After all, the police have developed more effective preventive strategies In addition, more criminals are in prison today—three times as many as 15 years ago And, possibly most relevant, with the aging of the population the baby boomers are past the prime years for committing crimes But if the last is paramount, then given the coming 20 per cent increase in teenagers we may see more crime in coming years It was an increase m drug use reported by the Department of Health and Human Services that led Dole to accuse the President of "a naked failure of leadership' Clinton, in ruin, charged him with shortchanging the Administration's anti-drug program But there is more to the story For one thing, the questions used m the 1994 survey were drastically different from those used previously, and the department is not sure it has successfully adjusted for that For another, some numbers are not statistically significant Heroin use by teenagers, for instance, superficially doubled—from 0.3 per cent in 1994 to 0 7 per cent in 1995 Yet as the Wall Street Journal noted, the actual number of users in the sample of 4,600 surveyed only went from 14 to 32 In seveial other cases as well the sample was too small and the margin of error too great to trust the results Add to that the fact that many of those questioned about drugs give confusing answers They will say they did not use marijuana in the past year, then say they did use it in the past month Nevertheless, in the heat of an election contest candidates are interested in sound bites, not statistical uncertainties In a campaign, "yes, but" is the first victim...

...Or could the phenomenon be attributable to some other factor altogether...

...Media manipulation has gotten out of control It overshadows the whole political process and the Presidential debates have become an exercise in one-upmanship Historian Alan Bnnkley says, "The most we learn from debates are personality conflicts" Perhaps someday the overly managed debates will be replaced by a European-style system Then television will simply be obliged to allocate unpaid time in chunks big enough for Presidential candidates to explain themselves That will require legislation and monitoring by an agency like the Federal Communications Commission But it may well be that television and politics have become too important to leave to TV executives and politicians The Greatest Aphrodisiac INDULGE ME...

...at 80, in a little ruminating about politics and sex, specifically paid sex Why Clinton strategist Dick Morns paid a reported $200 an hour for the favors of Sherry Rowlands I shall never understand For such access to a powerful White House person, who can let you overhear the President and tip you off about possible life on Mars, many a lobbyist in this town would gladly have paid ten times as much Indeed, not many years ago Paula Parkinson, registered lobbyist and former Playboy model, found sex a useful means of access Refreshingly candid, as these people often are, Parkinson said, "You usually sleep with the people you meet in this type of business " Henry Kissinger once said that "Power is the greatest aphrodisiac " As with many facets of his foreign policy I don't think he had it quite right What seems to be the greatest aphrodisiac for a powerful person is the excitement of risk In Britain in 1963, War Secretary John Profumo not only consorted with a prostitute, but one who was having a concurrent affair with the Soviet Embassy's naval attache It must hav e been quite a thrill, too, for 1984 Presidential contender Gary Hart to challenge reporters to follow him, and then invite Donna Rice to his house on Capitol Hill a few days later President John F Kennedy took unimaginable risks in carrying on with Judith Exner, the mistress of Mafia don Sam Giancana Giancana was, at the same time, working on contract for the CIA, trying to assassinate Fidel Castro That made the President's assignations with Exner not only a personal risk, but a national security nsk and a blackmail risk, as J Edgar Hoover was happy to point out to him Another staking thing about powerful persons who carry on extramai ital affairs is how many of themhavepiovided themselves with understanding wives Eleanor Roosevelt knew, Jacqueline Kennedy knew, Hillary Rodham Clinton knew, and all of them seemed willing to come to terms with infidelity and go on being the loyal spouse None, though, quite matched Dick Morris' wife Eileen McGann, who posed for pictures with her husband and declared, "I'm an adult, I accepted Dick's apology" Sherry Rowlands said, "He loves his wife, that's why he would pay me That makes him feel he's not cheating on his wife This is business, as long as he's paying for it" Write your own conclusion to that I've run out of snappy summations Playing the Numbers PRESIDENT CLINTON brags about a 9 per cent decrease m violent crime Robert Dole blames him foi a doubling of drug use among teenagers Statistics and politics make a heady mixture It has been said that figures don't lie, but liars figure This, however, is more a case of the figures being right up to a point, and political slogans oversimplifying complicated facts The 9 per cent decrease in violent crime comes from a Census Bureau study called the National Crime Victimization Survey Its findings differ from those of the FBI, which are based on police reports and show a 4 per cent decline But as the name Victimization Survey suggests, it focuses on victims, not criminals Thus, for example, it does not report on murder for the obvious reason that the victims cannot speak Still, both studies show an improvement The one thing that remains unclear is who deserves the credit Does the President'' Do the Republican governors, as Robert Dole asserts...

...Or when Dole has to fire two media consultants because they insist on not only packaging but dictating his message...

...Washington Notebook BY DANIEL SCHORR Clinton's Campaign Acrobatics IN ST LOUIS on September 10, President Bill Clinton told the Southern governors that "we have to prove the skeptics wrong' about the welfare overhaul Earlier, Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna E Shalala went further, saying the President himself is unhappy with the legislation and will fix it in a second term But those closest to welfare in her department do not believe the law ending the Federal entitlement is fixable Four key officials have resigned m a rare display of principle taking precedence over careers Last year David Ellwood, the architect of the original Clinton welfare-to-work concept, quietly returned to Harvard In mid-August Deputy Assistant Secretary Wendell Primus, who had warned that important elements of the bill passed by Congress were unworkable, quit before the President signed it On September 11 Mary Jo Bane, Assistant Secretary for Children and Families, and Peter Edelman, Ellwood's successor as Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, announced their resignations Their letters to the President and messages to their colleagues made clear that welfare was the issue Edelman told his staff that he had devoted a career of more than 30 years to reducing poverty, and the new welfare law went rn the opposite direction (As a matter of full disclosure, I should note here that Peter and his wife, Marian Wright Edelman, have been friends of mine since we all toured poverty-stricken areas of the Mississippi Delta with Senator Robert F Kennedy in the 1960s ) The resignations represent the biggest defections over domestic policy that the Clinton Administration has faced In the case of the last two, White House spokesman Mike McCurry limited himself to saying the President "highly values" the services of Bane and Edelman, who have done a spectacular job of canng for the needs of America's poor and America's children " Privately, one White House official said it was just as well they resigned if then policy didn't "concur with ours " President Clinton has been attempting to perform an acrobatic feat on welfare He has tried to deprive Robert Dole of an issue by signing a restrictive bill At the same time he has been signaling liberals, through Vice President Al Gore, Secretary Shalala and others, that he will improve the legislation soon after he is reelected He has not convinced either side Republican National Chairman Haley Barbour, noting promises to revise the bill, issued a statement charging Clinton with a "stealth plan" to gut welfare reform if re-elected And the latest resignations reflect the recognition of his own aides that he will not, or cannot, "fix" a law that has abolished a 60-year-old entitlement Submerging the Message IN 1980, Ted Turner's infant Cable News Network (CNN) defied a two-man Presidential debate decision It did that by electronically inserting independent candidate John Anderson into the Cleveland confrontation between President Jimmy Carter and Governor Ronald Reagan After Carter and Reagan responded to a question, it switched to Anderson in a Washington auditorium for his answer, then rejoined the Cleveland event from tape This time around an older, less bold CNN said it would find other ways to give air time to Ross Perot and other small-party candidates The Presidential debates, like the nominating conventions, have lost much of their reason for existence, and for roughly the same reason They are too contrived, too finely honed by media consultants to be revealing What do you remember of previous debates...

...If you're old enough, Richard M Nixon's five o'clock shadow, Gerald R Ford's "no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe," Reagan's "There you go again," Walter F Mondale's "Where's the beef?," Lloyd M Bentsen's "You're no Jack Kennedy,' and George Bush looking at his watch The problem is not that the medium is the message, rather, it is that the medium effectively submerges the message, if any, and invites the substitution of invidious one-liners What are we to think when Fox Television can dictate to President Clinton that he may not appear in his customary Oval Office setting...