As polls continue to show President Clinton losing to Bob Dole on questions of character and trustworthiness, Dole supporters are baffled at how little it appears to matter. Clinton has maintained his lead in the polls.
How does he do it? Speculation is rampant as to whether it is because the public is too jaded, or not paying attention or simply doesn’t trust any politician these days, anyway.
I have a theory: Look to the ladies. Two years after Clinton was set back on his heels by the “angry white male,” Dole appears to be suffering his biggest damage among anxious white females.
A recent NBC-Wall Street Journal poll offers an excellent example. It shows male voters to have mellowed considerably since 1994, when white male voters voted 2-to-1 for Republicans, giving them a landslide that swept Congress and most state governments.
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A new poll shows Dole and Clinton in a statistical tie (45-to-44 percent,) among men. Among women, Clinton leads almost 2-to-1, 57 percent to 31 percent, giving him an overall lead of 51 percent to 31 percent.
The poll, conducted jointly by Republican pollster Robert Teeter and Democratic pollster Peter Hart, found Dole’s campaign to be tailor-made for the concerns of most men, but wide of the mark in addressing the concerns of most women.
Overall, men tended to see government as a burden, while women tended to see government as protection. Men, therefore, tend to be more delighted by GOP promises to cut taxes and the size of government. Women tend to see such promises as assaults on the issues and programs they care about, including schools, scholarships, health care, reproductive rights and social safety-net programs, like Social Security and Medicare.
With that, say Teeter and Hart, Dole shot himself in the foot when he recently boasted in Pennsylvania about his vote against the federal law that allows workers to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a sick child or after the birth of a child. The Teeter-Hart poll shows women support that law by 84 percent.
I suspect Dole and other leading male Republicans are suffering the results of their own biases.
Instead of looking for women–like New Jersey’s budget-cutting Gov. Christine Todd Whitman–who “think” like men in their campaign styles, perhaps leading male Republicans should be looking for women who can help them to think like women.
They might learn a few things. As mainstream voters begin to see the Newt Gingrich Congress attack social programs aimed at addressing their problems, Congress became a new source of anxiety, especially among working women.
The gender gap didn’t mean much. Until the 1950s, women voted pretty much the same as men. President Dwight Eisenhower actually received more votes from women than men, while, hard as it may be to believe, John. F. Kennedy actually received less of the women’s vote than Richard Nixon, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal.
But the rising anti-government tide that Jimmy Carter helped usher in with his 1976 “outsider” campaign cost Democrats dearly among male voters by the time Ronald Reagan capitalized on it in the 1980s. At the same time, as more women entered the work force, their politics have become increasingly Democratic, much the way working men’s politics turned Democratic during the days of labor unionization and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.
As an African-American and, therefore, a full-fledged member of a group that has seen government turn against us and for us, at various times and places, I can appreciate the reluctance of vulnerable groups to jump up and cheer those who complain about “big government.” No one knows better than African-Americans, after centuries of legal slavery and segregation, that it’s better to have the government on your side than against you.
So, instead of singing their own version of “Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like A Man,” the Dole camp should try thinking more like women.
Instead of constantly rehashing questions about Clinton’s earlier flip-flops, land deals or extramarital peccadilloes or whether he “inhaled” or not, Republicans might save their breath. Voters who see themselves as economically and politically vulnerable are likely to care less about Clinton’s private character than his public conduct, which lately has stood firmly as a protector of popular programs.
Bob Dole should listen to the ladies. Women vote. He doesn’t have enough time to try Since he cancan’t repeal women’s right to vote, he should try appealing to it.