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: Candidates pound away Date: Sat, 31 Oct 92 14:00:15 EST Message-ID: \SE A \HD Candidates pound away \SH Bush calls foe's vows 'too much' \BY Paul Bedard \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES \DT TOWN AND COUNTRY, Mo. TOWN AND COUNTRY, Mo. - President Bush yesterday slammed Democrat Bill Clinton for making unrealistic and expensive promises to win votes as Mr. Bush stormed his way to Tuesday's showdown for the White House. Mr. Clinton's grandiose promises, which include his bid to win the homosexual vote by creating an AIDS "czar," would turn into a costly, bureaucratic nightmare, the president said. "He's promised too much," said Mr. Bush, adding that Mr. Clinton's economic plan would overtax the small businessman. "You might call this trample-down economy - trample down small business," he said revising a Clinton phrase. Charging the Arkansas governor with waffling on several issues, Mr. Bush said Mr. Clinton's "pattern of deceit is wrong for America." Mr. Bush's expanded attack on his opponent - as he campaigned in Tennessee, Missouri and Wisconsin - came as a new USA Today-CNN-Gallup poll showed him just 1 point behind Mr. Clinton. The poll, making clear that Mr. Bush's attacks on Mr. Clinton's character and programs have worked, showed Mr. Clinton with 41 percent to Mr. Bush's 40 percent. It is the highest Mr. Bush has been in the polls in months. The poll also showed that support for independent Ross Perot is shifting to Mr. Bush, who has focused his recent stump speeches on economic recovery efforts. A Newsweek poll, meanwhile, said there is only 2 percentage points between leader Clinton and underdog Bush. Internal White House polls, however, show Mr. Bush ahead of Mr. Clinton by 1.5 percent, the first ever to give the president the lead. As the campaigns began their final weekend sprint to Election Day, Mr. Clinton is casting himself as the underdog candidate, taking the offensive on policy questions but restraining himself from last-minute mudslinging, even though the cloud of the character issue still looms over his campaign. "I'm going to run like the underdog because I represent change and change is always hard," the Democratic presidential nominee said yesterday in New Jersey. The Arkansas governor also rebuked Mr. Bush's pointed attacks on the Democratic ticket and reminded voters of his vision of change. "There's a way to press and to be aggressive and to differ with your opponents without, you know, calling them names like 'bozo' and 'crazy,' and I'll try to do it," Mr. Clinton said, referring to Mr. Bush's recent references to his challengers. "I don't want to spend the next four days calling names and dividing people," he told a rally of about 10,000 backers later in a noontime drizzle in Pittsburgh. "I think the American people are tired of blame and division and denial." Noting Mr. Bush's "bozos" and "crazy" references, Mr. Clinton said, "Bozo makes people laugh and Bush makes people cry and America is going to be laughing on Tuesday. . . . "I'll tell you what I think is crazy - unemployment going up and income going down," he said. "Crazy is the candidate asking us to trust him with four more years when he told [former Soviet President] Mikhail Gorbachev don't pay any attention to anything he says," said Mr. Clinton, sharing the platform with Pennsylvania Sen. Harris Wofford and Democratic Senate nominee Lynn Yaekel. Mr. Bush said yesterday he might have been "a little exuberant in my rhetoric" when he branded the Democratic duo as bozos. After being questioned repeatedly about the "bozos" remark during the day, the president apologized on CNN's "Larry King Live" last night. "It was wrong. I admit it was wrong and I apologize if anyone was offended," he said, adding that it was intended as a comical comment. He did not take back his recent descriptions of Democratic vice presidential nominee Al Gore as "the ozone man" and "Mr. Ozone." Meanwhile, Mr. Perot stood behind an earlier charge by his running mate Adm. James Stockdale that Vietnam War protesters - including Mr. Clinton - prolonged the conflict. But he said he "won't make hay on that" against Mr. Clinton. "Did the protesters prolong the war? Of course they did. Of course they did," Mr. Perot said on the program "Talking with David Frost" on PBS. Earlier yesterday, Mr. Clinton reiterated that "the people who opposed the war were right," brushing aside charges that they prolonged the war and harmed POWs. In Missouri, Mr. Bush won the endorsement of Maryland Gov. William Donald Schaefer, a Democrat, who said he trusted Mr. Bush more than Mr. Clinton. The president also got a campaign boost from former President Reagan, who backed Mr. Bush's assertion that the economy is on the rebound. Mr. Reagan criticized Mr. Clinton for his "dismal track record as a small-state governor" and that the "doomsday" Democrats still represented the tax-and-spend approach. "Now that our economy is turning around and making improvement, America cannot afford to make a mistake," Mr. Reagan said in Roswell, N.M. Noting the election follows Halloween, Mr. Reagan said the Clinton-Gore ticket may have "the best costumes we've seen in a while, but behind those masks are tax-and-spenders who would scare the daylights out of your pocketbooks." Mr. Bush, on a 10-day nonstop campaign run, started the day in Tennessee, home to Sen. Al Gore, the Democratic vice presidential candidate. Aides said Mr. Bush wanted to underscore his confidence of re-election by going into enemy territory. Mr. Bush has a statewide whistle-stop train tour in Wisconsin today. Tomorrow, he will campaign in Michigan, New Jersey and Connecticut. Mr. Clinton plans to hit 12 states in the final days of the campaign, including a marathon 10-stop election eve campaign blitz. Yesterday he also made stops in Springfield, Ohio, Detroit, and Atlanta. Mr. Perot this weekend will make the most ambitious foray of his campaign, with stops in Tampa, Fla.; Kansas City, Mo.; Los Angeles; and Santa Clara, Calif. * Ronald A. Taylor, traveling with the Clinton-Gore campaign, contributed to this report, which is based in part on wire service reports. 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