Two voices on Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, the first from a Democrat in Congress:
”In many ways, he might be the best candidate we`ve had in a generation. He`s a terrific campaigner and he`s got a remarkable grasp of the issues.”
From a Democratic state party official: ”His campaign is going to blow up and he`s going to make this party pay a cruel price. There`s not much that can be done about the nomination at this point, but he`s going to hurt this party. And everybody knows it.”
With that breadth of opinion, Democrats shake their heads over the disparity between their hopes for unseating a troubled Republican president and their chances of beating him with this likely nominee in November.
Clinton is in Little Rock this weekend, resting his vocal cords while his aides try to round up endorsements and reassure fellow Democrats that all will be well now that the dreaded New York primary is over.
Skepticism runs deep; the reservations expressed by voters in TV network exit polls indicate that Clinton`s laryngitis will clear up long before his image problem.
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Clinton`s champions insist that the expressed longing for an alternative Democratic candidate reflects the inevitable unhappiness of those who watched their favorite Democrats pass on the chance to challenge President Bush.
They`re right, as far as it goes. Despite the mewlings of the pundits and the disaffected party regulars, the country is not crying out for Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore or New York Gov. Mario Cuomo.
Voters say they want another candidate for the same reason the unnamed Democrat in the polls always beats Bush and the Democrat with a name and a face usually does not.
The unnamed Democrat is free of baggage, and the Democrat in front of you is scarred, imperfect and, in Clinton`s case, incapable of telling the whole truth and nothing but.
You can argue that Clinton has been badly served by hit-and-miss newspaper exposes of his tenure as governor, and you can argue that his initial problem-the Gennifer Flowers saga-was a story driven by the journalistic bottom-feeders.
But the complaints would hold up better if Clinton were not so obviously complicit in his own difficulties. That reality was never more evident than it was in New York.
The whole point of the Clinton effort in the New York primary was to beat former California Gov. Jerry Brown by a respectable margin and get out of town alive.
There was no percentage in priming the tabloid pump and encouraging a news-gathering culture that prides itself on celebrating the trivial and shooting the wounded.
As it happened, Clinton suffered a pair of self-inflicted wounds, the first on the question of having smoked marijuana in the distant past, the second on the matter of his having received an induction notice from his draft board while in graduate school in England.
If he had been straightforward on the dope-smoking question the first time around-yes, once, a long time ago, and I did inhale-he would have been handed the same pass that Justice Clarence Thomas and Gore and a host of other political figures received.
The draft issue is dicier, but Clinton`s incremental approach to explaining what happened in 1969 flies in the face of the sound advice offered long ago by Boston novelist George V. Higgins:
”Tell the truth. It`s the easiest thing to remember.”
From now to the Democratic National Convention in July, Clinton must re-introduce himself to voters, and to doubters inside his own party
apparatus.
It is a daunting task for a candidate who has been introducing himself to voters on CBS` ”60 Minutes” while talking about his marital problems and on ABC`s ”Nightline” while talking about his draft deferments.
Any Democrat who has spent some time listening to Clinton outline his views on education and health care and welfare reform will tell you that the beleagured front-runner has a message worth hearing. Clinton`s impressive list of primary victories, from Georgia to Illinois to New York, demonstrates the appeal of that message.
For Clinton and his party, the message has gotten lost in a welter of doubts about his honesty. It has disappeared behind a wall of one-liners from Jay Leno, behind the sound of nervous laughter emanating from within his own party.
For that, the candidate must take full responsibility.