Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Battle waged on character front Date: Tue, 27 Oct 92 13:27:07 EST Message-ID: \SE A;DECISION '92: CHARACTER \HD Battle waged on character front \SR Second of a five-part series \BY Jerry Seper \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES Second of a five-part series examining key issues in the presidential race. The attack dog on the character issue during the 1992 presidential campaign has been Vice President Dan Quayle. His assault on Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton during the vice presidential debate - saying Mr. Clinton couldn't be trusted - has only recently been echoed by the much-maligned lips of President Bush. With time running out, Mr. Bush intensified his own attack in an Oct. 16 speech, accusing his opponent of a "pattern of deception." He charged that Mr. Clinton's anti-war activities in London were unpatriotic, accused the Rhodes scholar of evading the draft and lying about it since then, and said Mr. Clinton cannot be trusted to be president. "You cannot separate the character of the president from the character of the presidency," Mr. Bush said in Edison, N.J. "They go together. You cannot be one kind of man and another kind of president." Mr. Clinton has countered with questions about whether Mr. Bush was "in the loop" on key events of the Iran-Contra affair and whether he knew Saddam Hussein was using U.S. grain credits to fuel a military buildup. The president's character also has been attacked by independent candidate Ross Perot, who charged on Sunday that the Bush campaign tried to "smear" his daughter's reputation, disrupt her summer wedding and bug his Dallas campaign headquarters. The question is, however, whether character is an issue that matters to the American electorate. A recent poll by the Wall Street Journal and NBC said that while 51 percent of the voters in a national survey were satisfied with Mr. Clinton's character, 44 percent said they had "major doubts." A national Gallup Poll earlier this year found that on the issue of "upholding family values," 68 percent believed that this trait "strongly applies" to Mr. Bush, compared with 25 percent for Mr. Clinton. On the question of honesty and trustworthiness, 44 percent said this "strongly applies" to Mr. Bush, compared with 19 percent for Mr. Clinton. Similarly, a Time-CNN poll recently asked voters how much they trusted the candidates and 52 percent said they trusted Mr. Bush compared while 28 percent said they trusted Mr. Clinton. "Whether character is a factor or not is relevant only as it relates to what the people want in terms of a president," said Max Parker, a spokeswoman for Mr. Clinton. "They're looking for someone with the character to get the economy back on track and answer the more serious questions facing this country." Ms. Parker said Republicans have resorted to character attacks because "they can't talk about their record." She added that GOP character challenges "haven't worked, because the public wants to stick to the issues." Tony Mitchell, a spokesman for Mr. Bush, said the character issue is an important one because it defines who the next president will be." "The American people want a person in the Oval Office who they can trust to make decisions that will affect not only their lives, but the lives of people across the world," he said. "We think the record shows that George Bush is that person." Brad Coker, president of Mason-Dixon Policy Media Research, said that while the character issue is a consideration and has resulted in decreasing numbers recently for Mr. Clinton, it is not the campaign's overriding concern. "The issue playing the major role is the economy, and it continues to be what is driving voters today," he said. Mr. Coker said Republicans have been trying to "scrape away" Mr. Clinton's soft support by attacking his character in what he said was an attempt to win back Reagan Democrats. "It could work, but they are going to have to take a new angle," he said. "They're going to have to risk some backlash to make the issue central in the campaign." The GOP character challenge has centered on Mr. Clinton's Vietnam-era draft history, contradictory stories about his anti-war activities and claims of womanizing that have dogged the candidate since he first entered Arkansas politics more than a decade ago. The Clinton response has been a blast at whether Mr. Bush knew Iraq was using grain credits to buy military supplies before it invaded Kuwait and whether he later concealed it; an accusation that he knows more than he has admitted about an arms-for-hostages deal with Iran; and his infamous "Read my lips: No new taxes" promise during the 1988 Republican National Convention. Mr. Perot also has attacked Mr. Bush's character, although allegations involving the Texas billionaire's daughter and bugging of his campaign office have not been substantiated - either by Mr. Perot or the by FBI, which investigated the wiretap allegation. The independent challenger also has been targeted on the character issue. He is facing an inquiry by state and federal authorities into allegations that he investigated his own campaign volunteers. The Perot inquiry centers on reported unauthorized credit checks conducted by the candidate's Dallas staff and others working for him. Perot volunteers have told The Washington Times that as many as 30 former volunteers were subjected to unauthorized - and possibly illegal - credit checks. Most of the character challenges, however, have been made by the Bush campaign. It has accused Mr. Clinton of lying about his draft record and about his anti-war activities. It also has suggested that his recent denials of womanizing are not true. Fueling much of the charge is the fact that several stories Mr. Clinton has told about his efforts to avoid military service and about his anti-war activities have been contradictory. Since 1978, Mr. Clinton has told several different stories regarding his draft activities. He also has had to confirm press accounts that he reneged on an ROTC agreement at the University of Arkansas that afforded him a draft deferment to attend school in England. The university's former ROTC commander, Col. Eugene Holmes, said in an affidavit that despite denials by Mr. Clinton that he never received any favorable treatment to evade the draft, the then-22-year-old student lied and used political pressure to win a deferment. Mr. Clinton's reported anti-war activities have been another source of contradiction. He has denied being an active anti-war demonstrator or organizer, although his 1969 letter to Col. Holmes says the opposite. "I have written and spoken and marched against the war. . . . After I left Arkansas last summer, I went to Washington to work in the national headquarters of the Moratorium, then to England to organize the Americans here for demonstrations," he wrote. A Jesuit "peace priest" who was with him at anti-war rallies in England and on a visit to peace activists in Oslo in 1969, also disagreed. But the Rev. Richard McSorley, who has run the Center for Peace Studies as part of the Georgetown University faculty since 1964, said he was not surprised Mr. Clinton, whom he supports for president, had a different version of events. "Since he's running for president he can't afford to be clear on any of these things," Father McSorley said. "He'd be foolish to tell the truth about it." The character issue also has centered on allegations that both Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush have had extramarital affairs. The president vehemently denied a story in August in the New York Post that said he had an affair with longtime aide Jennifer Fitzgerald - a rumor that had resisted years of Democratic efforts to make it public. The Bush campaign blamed Mr. Clinton's campaign staff for reviving the story, which was floated without much success by Michael Dukakis' camp in 1988 and by Hillary Clinton in a Vanity Fair interview this spring. Mr. Clinton distanced himself from the episode, saying: "I didn't like it when it was done to me. I don't like it when it is done to him." Mr. Clinton was targeted in January in the Star, a supermarket tabloid, when Gennifer Flowers, a nightclub singer and former Arkansas state employee, said she had a 12-year affair with the governor. He denied the allegation, saying Miss Flowers had publicly refuted the story but later changed her mind for money. Mr. Clinton said during a "60 Minutes" interview on CBS that he had had "problems" in his marriage but denied any involvement with Miss Flowers. As late as last week, Mr. Quayle's chief aide was saying that Senate Democrats who kept the late John Tower from becoming defense secretary because of allegations of womanizing were using a double standard by not raising the same questions about their presidential nominee. "I don't see how these Democratic senators can argue . . . that Senator Tower has shown a pattern of behavior that disqualified him to be secretary of defense, yet, somehow, Bill Clinton is qualified to be commander in chief of the armed forces," William Kristol said. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM