Final Week: Dole Vies For Calif.; Clinton Coasts

WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, Oct. 28) -- Heading into the last full week before the election, a buoyant Bill Clinton claimed credit for new encouraging economic news while challenger Bob Dole expressed disbelief that Americans want four more years of the incumbent president.

The federal budget deficit, according to a government report scheduled for release today, has fallen to $107.3 billion for fiscal 1996, its lowest level since the early 1980s. While congressional Republicans sought to take credit on Sunday, Clinton seized the spotlight at a campaign event today in St. Louis where he declared, "We have more evidence today that our economy is on the right track."

"This is a huge credit to the common-sense Republican Congress which fought for spending constraints," GOP chairman Haley Barbour said Sunday.

For the campaign's home stretch, the president plans to concentrate on four key themes: balancing the federal budget, education, welfare reform, and "making families stronger for the 21st century," according to White House spokesman Mike McCurry. That includes making health care more accessible and secure, and protecting neighborhoods from drugs, gangs, guns and violence, McCurry told reporters.

Dole is scheduled for more campaigning in California in the hope of pulling off an against-the-odds bid for the Golden State's 54 electoral votes. Sunday he stressed his opposition to providing illegal immigrants with social services and called for an end to affirmative action, both issues which resonate with many Californians.

While keeping a feisty, upbeat tone, the Kansan, in an interview with CNN's Candy Crowley, expressed dismay and confusion that the American public seems unmoved by the questions that he, and lately Ross Perot, have been raising about the president's ethics.

"I'm baffled, I'm really baffled," Dole said. "I mean, it seems to me, and I'm not trying to be judgmental, but if the American people really care and really are concerned about who's in charge, something ought to get their attention sooner or later."

Dole, who has stepped up his attacks on the "liberal media" and most notably The New York Times, reacted wryly to that paper's endorsement Sunday of the president.

"Probably comes as no great surprise that The New York Times endorsed Bill Clinton," he said. "I know that is a shock to all of you. But even they had to apologize for his ethics. Why apologize, why not send him back to Little Rock, Arkansas?"

Asked if there was anything he should have done differently, Dole commented, "I've thought about maybe I should have left the Senate earlier... We did win 27 primaries in a row so we had, a very strong wave. The early primaries -- New Hampshire, and Iowa, Arizona, Delaware -- I probably could have devoted more time (in those states)." Dole lost the first two to conservative pundit Pat Buchanan and the latter two to publisher Malcolm S. "Steve" Forbes.

But he was quick to stress that he's "still optimistic," and "not here signing off, I'm just signing on."

The full interview will be broadcast on CNN today during a special, hour-long edition of "Inside Politics" at 4 p.m. ET.

Final Week: Dole Vies For Calif.; Clinton Coasts

Related Stories: