President Clinton and Bob Dole set out clashing visions of America’s future Sunday night in the first of two presidential debates, an event long on detail, devoid of knockout punches and heavily focused on the incumbent’s record and the challenger’s call for a deep tax cut.
In a mostly cordial 90-minute nationally televised exchange before a live audience at Bushnell Memorial Hall, Clinton took credit for a strong economy and for acting as a Democratic brake on a Republican majority in Congress.
“Four years ago, you took me on faith,” Clinton said. “Now, there’s a record: 10 1/2 million more jobs, rising incomes, falling crime rates and welfare rolls, a strong America at peace. We are better off than we were four years ago. Let’s keep it going.”
Befitting his underdog status, Dole took a more aggressive tack throughout the debate and repeatedly accused the president of exaggerating his accomplishments. Dole said Clinton was taking credit for the work of others, had raised taxes and is trying to hide his liberalism behind a facade of election-year conversions.
Contending that Americans are anxious about the future, Dole said, “I know millions of you still have anxieties. You work harder and harder to make ends meet and put food on the table.”
Despite the high stakes coming into the debate, it did not appear to be a pivotal campaign event and most likely reinforced decisions supporters already had made about their candidates rather than narrowing the wide polling gap between them. Dole and Clinton meet again on Oct. 16 in San Diego.
Clinton repeated his theme from his nomination acceptance speech that he wanted to build a bridge to the future, thereby drawing a generational contrast between the 50-year-old incumbent and the 73-year-old challenger. “My ideas are better for the future,” Clinton said.
Dole sought to turn the theme on Clinton, suggesting that the president cannot be trusted to keep his campaign promises.
“I want to be a bridge to the future. I want to be a bridge to the truth,” Dole said. “The truth is, there’s a lot wrong with America.”
While Dole plugged his economic plan, which includes a 15 percent income tax cut over three years, Clinton repeatedly assailed the package as a “risky scheme” that would blow a hole in the federal budget.
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Clinton promoted a list of what he called his administration’s accomplishments, from family medical leave to gun control, and said Dole and other Republicans in Congress had opposed them. “I supported them because I thought they were a legitimate effort to help families improve their lives,” Clinton said.
Dole countered by saying “I think the basic difference is, I trust the people. The president trusts the government.” Dole also volunteered that “I am not an extremist.”
Clinton responded that the federal government was smaller and less bureaucratic than when he took office.
In foreign policy, Clinton argued that the military is stronger and the world is safer since he took office. “There will always be problems in this old world, but if we are moving in the right direction and America is leading, we’ll be heading in the right direction.”
Dole replied that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein has become stronger since Clinton became president, and while he expressed moderate support for the president’s diplomatic efforts in the Middle East crisis, he said that the White House’s actions were based mostly on photo-opportunity diplomacy.
“It’s almost like an ad hoc foreign policy. Read the papers. What country’s in trouble and we’ll have a meeting,” Dole said, asserting that the U.S. has lost credibility.
Clinton turned Dole’s accusation of liberalism back on him, calling it a Republican tactic pulled out in tight races. “It’s sort of a golden oldie,” Clinton said. “I don’t think that dog will hunt this time.”
The Clinton-Dole duel became all the more important when Reform Party nominee Ross Perot, who took part in the 1992 presidential debates as an independent candidate, was relegated to the sidelines Sunday, commenting afterwards on CNN’s “Larry King Live.”
The first debate in a presidential campaign usually helps, however marginally, the underdog or the non-incumbent. Because Dole is both of those, the Democratic and GOP camps looked for the Republican to get a post-debate bump in the polls and for Clinton’s double-digit lead to shrink.
John Buckley, the Dole campaign’s communications director, had said: “We need this to be in single digits by Oct. 15.” The debates will focus voter attention on the campaign that has been lacking until now, he said.
“There is sort of a vague feeling that Clinton has the race in the bag, and people are not sufficiently aware of the stakes,” Buckley said. “The debates, our TV ads and Bob Dole’s performance on the campaign trail will change that . . . We know from the polling that too few people have a clear understanding that Bill Clinton raised taxes.”
Borrowing a page from the Democratic ticket’s playbook, Dole was to embark Monday on a two-day campaign bus tour of New Jersey. He and running mate Jack Kemp will bus to Ohio on Thursday and Friday.
Clinton’s first post-debate swing was to take him through Connecticut, New Hampshire and Maine on Monday.
Kemp and Vice President Al Gore are to debate Wednesday; the format will follow the one used Sunday.
Clinton and Dole’s second and final face-to-face meeting will be a “town hall” gathering in which they will take questions from an audience at the University of California at San Diego.
The two presidential debates are the best chance for Dole, mired in opinion polls with about a third of the likely vote, to show himself to be a viable alternative.