Dole Stumps, Clinton Strategizes

WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, Oct. 18) -- Republican Bob Dole kept up his drumbeat of criticism of the Clinton Administration on the stump, while the president huddled with advisors to plot strategy for the final two weeks of the campaign.

At a campaign rally in the cool Albuquerque, N.M., morning, Dole stuck with his last-stretch strategy: tough talk on the ground, coupled with equally tough TV ads.

"This crowd, they have given us Filegate, they have given us Travelgate and now they are giving us some other gate, hundreds of thousands of dollars coming in from foreign sources," Dole said, hitting at contributions to the Democrats from an Indonesian banking family. (128K WAV sound)

A new Dole TV ad also rips Clinton's ethics. It quotes Clinton saying, "Everybody knows that I have tougher ethics rules than any previous president." An announcer declares, "More investigations, more prosecutions and more convictions. And the list goes on and on."

Dole told a rally: "Here is a president that often talks of a bridge to the future. More often it seems a bridge to wealthy political donors. It goes through a laundromat first and takes a left at the Democratic National Committee and then rolls all the way down to the Oval Office."(192K WAV sound)

Clinton has all but ignored Dole's taunts so far. In meetings tonight and this weekend, the president and his advisors will make their final strategic decisions for the last two weeks of the campaign.

Aides say there are three objectives:

Let the president drive home a message of accomplishment in his first term.
Respond "appropriately" to charges from the Dole campaign.
Activate an aggressive "get out the vote" effort. Turnout is the remaining wild card in the election, they say.

Clinton aides say their aim is to lock down the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win and to help Democratic congressional candidates.

From here on out, the president will be on the road virtually non-stop. He'll begin a four-day trip Sunday that will take him back again to the battleground states of New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Michigan, then to a toss-up: Florida.

After a quick return to Washington, Clinton will head for Republican territory: Alabama, Louisiana and possibly Georgia.

Says White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry, "There'll be a mix of travel to states in which we believe the president should work hard in, furthering his own interests, and then also perhaps some states in which he will be helping candidates that are down on the ballot."

Clinton campaign aides claim the president doesn't need to engage Dole directly on the "character" issue and that Dole is pushing it because he needs to energize his own base.

For Dole, the final strategy is a work in progress. Dole will go where the votes might be and advertising money will take the same route.

The current scenario includes full-bore concentration on California, without which, Dole strategists now believe, he has no chance to pull out a victory. A big ad buy is in the making there and Dole is expected to return to the state again next week.

Aides say geographical decisions are based what is best for the campaign, not on trying to bolster congressional races.

In these final days, Dole will go where he wants to go and say what he wants to say. Perhaps it will be seen as quixotic, but a top Dole staffer had a different word for what his underdog candidate is feeling: freedom.

Dole Stumps, Clinton Strategizes

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