Clinton-Gore Campaign Winds Through South

President heads to Little Rock for Labor Day

DYERSBURG, Tennessee (AllPolitics, Aug.31) -- President Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and their wives wound their way through Tennessee and Kentucky Saturday and ended their two-day campaign bus tour in Memphis, preaching a gospel of family values and economic prosperity.

The tour was nostalgic of their 1992 campaign bus trips. The caravan of 14 red, white and blue buses touted banners proclaiming they were "on the road to the 21st century."

The group toured parts of Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee, Gore's home state, all of which Clinton carried in 1992. He hopes to fend off a challenge for them this year from Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole.

The bus made so-called impromptu stops in small towns to stir up grassroots support for their re-election on November 5.

After a mid-afternoon rally in the west Tennessee city of Dyersburg, the tour ended in Memphis Saturday night, greeted by a boisterous crowd of more than 10,000 people. Clinton and Gore urged supporters to help them "build a bridge" to the 21st century. Clinton was to fly on to his home town of Little Rock, Arkansas, for the Labor Day holiday weekend.

"You've made us very happy tonight -- everyone here," Clinton said sweeping his arm out toward the crowd. "Hillary and Tipper and Al and I, we kind of like doing this. Can you tell it?" The crowd roared.

At rallies, Clinton said his policies have led to strong economic growth in America, and he rejected Dole's proposed 15 percent across-the-board tax cut as unaffordable.

Clinton promoted his modest proposals for tax reductions for middle-class families, including a new one announced Thursday at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago to free home sellers of a burdensome capital gains tax.

The White House said Clinton will cut his campaign trip short by one day, skipping a trip to Pennsylvania Tuesday so he can rest. He did a whistle-stop train tour to Chicago last week.

Other issues cloud campaign

Hours before the Democrats reached Kentucky's tobacco-growing center, nearly 1,000 tobacco farmers and their families demonstrated against new rules approved by Clinton to let the Food and Drug Administration curb the sale and marketing of cigarettes to teen-agers.

The political message of the day was slightly overshadowed Saturday by news that Iraqi forces had overrun a Kurdish stronghold in northern Iraq.

"It's premature by a long shot to speculate on U.S. forces being involved," Gore said. "The president has ordered them to a state of high alert. We're observing the situation, consulting with our allies. And it's premature to speculate beyond that," he said.

Some aides privately noted that the Iraqi situation might bump the embarrassing resignation Thursday of key presidential advisor Dick Morris out of the headlines.

In an interview Friday with MTV, Clinton said he no longer would rely on Morris as a political advisor, but would talk to him as a friend.

New polls showed Clinton getting a boost out of the convention and leading Dole by up to 21 percentage points, despite the Morris flap.

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