Two Moderates Fight For The Center

By Bill Schneider/CNN

WASHINGTON (June 17) -- Despite the seemingly continual confrontations between the Democratic president and the Republican Congress, candidates Bill Clinton and Bob Dole are emphasizing surprisingly similar rhetoric during the presidential campaign.

Both parties had big agendas in the last term, and both agendas failed dismally. The electorate is dissatisfied with big agendas, so in the 1996 race, the candidates are sloughing off their agendas and foisting them on their opponents.

The focal issue for the Democrats in 1994 was health care reform, but it flopped. Clinton suffered a huge setback in the midterm elections, partially causing the Democrats to lose control of Congress. Since then, Clinton has been co-opting Republican issues and minimizing his apparent differences with Republicans.

When Clinton detailed the "new" era of government last summer, it sounded awfully similar to the Republican government of old.

Clinton pushed for a government "that is leaner and more effective and focuses on those things which only we can do at the national level, and then does everything we can do to make it possible for people to do what should be done properly at the state level or the local level or in the private level, or in the private sector."

Dole, for his part, is sounding off on social issues typically kept in the Democratic domain.

Dole left the Contract with America out of his farewell Senate speech last week. When he touted his 35 years of legislative achievements, they had a distinctly bipartisan cast. Instead, Dole listed his moves to help elderly citizens, disabled Americans and children.

"We worked together on food stamps and the WIC (nutrition) program and the school lunch program," Dole said.

But the two candidates are not content to simply bend toward the center. They are compelled to recreate their opponent's past failures. Clinton is resurrecting the Republican Contract with America fiasco, while Dole is focusing on Clinton's midterm tumbles.

Dole is reminding voters of the Clinton of 1993 and 1994 who proposed outlawing a ban on gays in the military, instigating a tax increase and appointing his wife to head the health care reform task force. Dole wants to instill the fear that if Clinton is re-elected, Hillary Rodham Clinton will be running the country and Clinton's liberalism will go unchecked (96K WAV sound)

From the Clinton spin doctors, a Republican president leads America toward a nation with no social conscience controlled by Dole and Speaker Newt Gingrich (96K WAV sound). The Republicans, Clinton warns, will destroy the environment, crush the working family and destroy the fabric of the country.

Dole points to what he considers Clinton's dangerous hidden agenda, asserting that in a second term, Clinton's liberal tendencies will go unchecked.

"We know it would be different if Bill Clinton were to somehow win re-election, his liberalism unrestrained by the need to face the American people again," Dole said. "Instead of trying to preempt Republican initiatives, he will do what comes naturally -- raising our taxes again, blocking education reform, imposing more social experiments on the military, mandating more regulations, appointing more permissive judges and the rest of his sorry grab bag of liberal policies."

With two moderate, pragmatic candidates, the election should be an honest, above-board race. But they're trying to portray each other as a dangerous radical with a hidden agenda.

This story originally appeared on CNN's "Inside Politics."

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