Clinton Knows How To Play The Heavy

There was a moment, in the San Diego debate, when Bob Dole actually looked as if he wanted to run and hide behind Jim Lehrer’s chair.

All night, Bill Clinton had been playing alpha male, throwing gorilla dust at Dole, hoping to distract his opponent from attacking on character and ethics. In a campaign that choreographs every move for maximum public approval, right down to body language, Clinton was following his strategists’ in-your-face script: You lookin’ at me, Bobster? Come over here and say that.

The president kept sidling out from behind his lectern, bearing down on Bob Dole and looking as if he were getting ready to give him a good clip from the side.

Answering a question on welfare, Clinton crowded poor Dole so much that the Republican backed away from his own lectern, apologetically murmuring, “I’m going to get out of your way here.”

On a query about Social Security, the president came so close that Dole averted his eyes, turned as though he were going to make a dash for it, and ended up seeking sanctuary at the far edge of his lectern.

Clinton long ago understood the first rule of talk shows: There can be only one host, so make the other guy look like your sidekick.

The Dole camp had hoped its man could get the president to lose his temper. But it was Bill Clinton, the man of many faces, who unnerved Bob Dole. Behind that smarmy, feel-your-pain game face, the big fella looked menacing.

It was an odd reversal, like a horror movie where the creepy guy dissecting small animals turns out to be a biologist, and the sweet-faced boy turns out to be the psychotic.

Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich are seen as the two scariest men in politics, Hatchet Man and Hatchet Fat Man. Perceived as grinches who would starve children and harm grannies, they have sent women screaming from the GOP (With all the time they spend talking to reporters, it’s a miracle these women have time to watch soccer.)

So how come the big meanies are cowed by President Pushover?

The villains are inept, outmaneuvered at every turn. Their sensitive opponents turn out to play a more ruthless game than they do. Bill Clinton and Al Gore look like Boy Scouts, but they’re absolute killers.

When Clinton first became president, he had a reputation as someone who could be rolled, someone who could not even rein in Democrats who expressed open disdain for his vacillating, prevaricating tendencies.

Gingrich also scorned the president’s puppyish desire to please. A Gingrich aide told me that the new Speaker felt he could be tougher and more effective than Bill Clinton because he did not care if he was loved.

But then came the ‘95 budget negotiations. We learned that Gingrich did indeed need to be loved. Not only that - he needed to be loved by Bill Clinton. It puts you at a terrible disadvantage, being a man who needs to be loved by a man who needs to be loved.

Gingrich started talking about the president in a way that sounded disturbingly like a teen-age girl talking about Ethan Hawke. “I melt when I’m around him,” he once confided to Clinton aides.

When Clinton did not pay enough attention to him on Air Force One, Gingrich pouted and shut down the government. (The president didn’t write, didn’t call.)

He still sounds unrequited, either calling Clinton a deceiver or gushing, as he did after the debate, that “he is a very attractive personality.”

Dole and Gingrich see Clinton the way a pickpocket sees a cat burglar.

Clinton practices the black arts better than they do. He is better at being insincere, better at being opportunistic, better at frightening the country, better at playing dirty.

They have to hand it to him. He’s the best Republican of them all. He was able, like Ronald Reagan, to put a smiling face on a Republican revolution, which the frowning Dole and Gingrich were unable to do.

The big meanies never really grasped the art of being mean. Only nice folks can be mean. When you throw people off welfare, you must remember to feel their pain. No wonder Republican candidates everywhere are frightened. Bill Clinton is really scary.

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