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                                                                                COVER STORIES, Page 46

THE POLITICAL INTEREST

It's Not Going to Be Pretty


A high-minded debate of the issues? No way. The roughing up of
Bill Clinton has just begun.

By Michael Kramer


    No less an expert than the leader of the free world has
now pronounced 1992 "the ugliest political year I've ever
seen." Not that he or his minions are the problem, said George
Bush last week. It's the other guys: "I look across at the
Democratic primary, and anything that happened in 1988 is pale
in comparison to what's going on there."

    Has the President seen the light? He says he has issued
written instructions ordering his operatives to "stay out of the
sleaze business," but the definition thing persists. "I don't
know what's negative and what's not these days," says the man
who views the famous Willie Horton TV ad as a fair examination
of prison-furlough abuse.

    Fuzzy markers delight the G.O.P., and a foretaste of the
war to come was glimpsed clearly on the night before Bush's
feigned distress. Minutes after Bill Clinton won the New York
food fight last Tuesday, Republican Party chairman Rich Bond
gleefully recalled Jerry Brown's characterization of Clinton as
"the prince of sleaze." They've "got them all on tape,'' says
Bond. "Paul Tsongas calling Clinton a `Pander Bear'; Ed Koch
saying, `It happens that Bill Clinton has no credibility'; Mario
Cuomo calling Clinton's middle-class tax cut `a joke.' We've got
'em, and you'll be seeing 'em. It ain't gonna be pretty."

    How unpretty will it get? "Character dominates in voters'
minds," says Bush campaign manager Robert Teeter; our job, says
Bond, is to "remind" voters that it does. For the most part, the
"worst of Clinton" will be left for the press to reiterate and
for the surrogate salons (the radio call-in shows) to
elaborate. Such restraint does not preclude "man-in-the-street
spots," cautions Republican consultant Roger Stone. "Ford almost
won in '76 with a series of TV ads that had `regular people'
saying, `There's just something about Carter that bothers me'
and `He seems so wishy-washy' and `His smile strikes me as
insincere.' Same thing this year, for sure."

    The truly rough stuff will rise, virgin-like, from the
same "independent expenditure" group that produced the Willie
Horton ad in 1988. Four years ago, these conservative ideologues
called themselves "Americans for Bush"; this time they're the
"Presidential Victory Committee." They have a $10 million
budget, and "what they'll do," says Stone, "is kind of obvious."
All they've said so far is what they won't do: they won't
establish a 900 number so the curious can hear the Gennifer
Flowers tapes. Beyond that, every mini-scandal and Clinton
slickery is considered fair game.

    While all that is going on, the campaign will take the
"high road," says Bond. "The first goal," explains Stone, "is
to extend the doubts about Clinton to issues. You play to the
pre-existing prejudice -- that many people don't know if they
can believe anything Clinton says. There'll be ads that say
`Clinton talks about a middle-class tax cut, but he's raised
over 100 taxes in Arkansas' and `He talks about improving
education, but Arkansas' pupils rank near the bottom on test
scores.' " According to Bond, we'll also see spots that
"accentuate the stature gap," like, "In the next decade 10 Third
World countries will have nuclear weapons. Who better can deal
with a madman with nukes, George Bush or Bill Clinton?" "Foreign
policy will be an issue if we make it an issue," says Stone,
"and we will. You always play to your strength, and you play it
over and over."

    Hillary Clinton will be targeted too. "Barbara Bush plays
the piano so she doesn't drown out George's violin," says
Richard Nixon. "Hillary pounds the piano so hard that Bill can't
be heard. You want a wife who's intelligent, but not too
intelligent." For Roger Ailes, who directed the Bush media
effort four years ago, the logic is simple: "You couple them and
go for a score on family values. You say that Bill and Hillary
believe that children should have the right to sue their
parents. I don't know if Bill believes that, but Hillary does,
so you just assume. They themselves say they're a team, so it'll
fly."

    Unless the polls dictate different tactics -- or he just
can't contain himself -- Bush will be the soul of propriety. The
President will aid the negative strategy only in debate or when
responding to a Clinton charge, but in either case, the code
words will be unmistakable. "If he gets a question about some
supposed insensitivity, he'll say, `I don't need a lecture from
Bill Clinton about personal responsibility,' " says Ailes. "Or
if Clinton waffles during a debate," adds Bond, "I can hear the
President saying, `There he goes again, dodging another
question.' "

    Ailes advises that nothing will work for Clinton unless he
gives as good as he gets. "He should run ads about George's
kids' problems," says Ailes, and "spots on the foreign clients
our campaign guys represent, and others about our contributors
to allege that the President is controlled by powerful
interests. He'll never prove that Bush is just as bad as him,
but he's got to try and take character off the table by muddying
the waters. If he doesn't, he'll be left trying to convince
voters that he has integrity, and that's a rough road." To which
an unsmiling and depressed senior Clinton aide says, "He's got
that right."