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POLITICS: THE OVERVIEW

CLINTON AND DOLE, FACE TO FACE, SPAR OVER MEDICARE AND TAXES

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October 7, 1996, Section A, Page 1Buy Reprints
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President Clinton briskly defended his stewardship last night as improving the lives of ordinary Americans while Bob Dole tried to chip at his record by saying that average people had become worse off in the last four years and would prosper with Mr. Dole's proposal for a major tax cut.

The Republican challenger also repeatedly raised questions about the President's character in the first debate of the 1996 Presidential campaign.

Trailing in statewide and national polls, Mr. Dole was on the offensive throughout the 90-minute program in Hartford, occasionally displaying a sharp edge, frequently flashing his dry wit and needling Mr. Clinton by calling him a liberal elitist who had done little to curb drug use among teen-agers and whose policies would saddle Americans with higher taxes.

Mr. Clinton, who remained calm but assertive in the face of Mr. Dole's combativeness, put himself forward to the national television audience as having protected the education system, the elderly and the nation's children, and as having presided over a foreign policy that has kept the nation out of war. He depicted his targeted tax cuts as more responsible than what he persistently derided as Mr. Dole's ''scheme,'' a 15 percent across-the-board tax cut.

''It is not midnight in America, Senator: We are better off than we were four years ago,'' Mr. Clinton declared, sounding a theme of his campaign that he repeated throughout the evening.

Mr. Dole drew the first of many laughs of the night when he said that Mr. Clinton, along with Saddam Hussein of Iraq, was ''better off than he was four years ago.'' But Mr. Dole said that millions of Americans were worse off, in part because the economy was growing slowly.

Neither candidate provided any particularly noteworthy moments, either a particularly compelling quote, or a mistake, that might come to define the debate.

Both candidates tried to link their opponent to the perceived weaknesses of their parties. For Mr. Dole, the word for Mr. Clinton was ''liberal.''

The Bushnell Theater in downtown Hartford erupted in laughter when Mr. Dole, in a remark about liberals, said of Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, ''I remember one day on the floor I said, 'Now, gentlemen, let me tax your memories,' and Kennedy jumped up and said, 'Why haven't we thought of that before?' ''

Mr. Clinton brushed aside the criticism. ''This liberal charge, that's what their party always drags out when they get in a tight race,'' Mr. Clinton said of the Republicans. He said the charge was like a ''golden oldie.''

As his rival harped on liberals, Mr. Clinton cited the unpopular Speaker, Newt Gingrich, far more than Mr. Dole's running mate, Jack Kemp. The President brought up Mr. Kemp only when he reminded the audience that Mr. Kemp ''once said that Bob Dole never met a tax he didn't hike.''

Mr. Clinton also seized on a question about Medicare to link Mr. Dole to Mr. Gingrich, an effort that is a staple of Democratic campaign advertising. The ''Dole-Gingrich'' Medicare plan, Mr. Clinton said, would put Medicare at risk, while Mr. Clinton said his own plan to balance the budget would provide 10 years of breathing room to address the looming crisis in Medicare.

Mr. Clinton seized on the first question posed by the moderator, Jim Lehrer of PBS -- about his view of the differences between himself and Mr. Dole -- to deliver a litany of his accomplishments.

''I have worked hard on things like the family and medical leave bill, the Brady bill, the assault weapons ban, the program to put 100,000 police on the street,'' he said. ''All these are programs that Senator Dole opposed and I supported because I felt they were a legitimate effort to help people make the most of their own lives.'' To that he later added his support for a ''V-chip'' to restrict violent television programming, for rating systems for television programs, for anti-drug programs and for greater regulation of tobacco.

Mr. Dole responded with a line from his own stump speech. ''The basic difference is, I trust the people,'' he said. ''The President trusts the government.'' And he reminded viewers that Mr. Clinton had proposed a $265 billion, five-year tax increase in his fiscal 1993 budget, as well as a sweeping health-care overhaul in his first year in office -- at a cost, he said, of $1.5 trillion.

Mr. Clinton replied, ''I trust the people.'' He then said his Administration was ''smaller and less bureaucratic'' and had delegated more powers to the states than the Administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush combined.

Mr. Dole and Mr. Clinton have shared the stage more than many debate combatants in the past because they frequently appeared side by side when Mr. Dole was still the Senate Republican leader. But the event last night was particularly critical for Mr. Dole because it gave him his first opportunity to appear on an equal footing with the President before an audience of tens of millions.

The format also allowed the two major candidates to face each other head on without Ross Perot, the Reform Party candidate, who was was excluded by the Commission on Presidential Debates, the sponsor of this forum and the second and final in San Diego on Oct. 16. Both candidates appealed to Mr. Perot's supporters when asked about one of his signature issues, campaign reform.

Beyond pounding Mr. Clinton on policy, Mr. Dole's intent last night was to erase his image as a hatchet man from the 1976 Vice Presidential debate -- when he assailed his opponents for ''Democrat wars.'' At the start of the program, for example, Mr. Dole introduced Frank Carafa, who helped rescue Mr. Dole on a hillside in Italy after he was wounded by enemy fire in World War II.

Mr. Dole responded to Mr. Lehrer's wide-ranging questions with hardly any references to his three decades on Capitol Hill, but at times, he spoke in a legislative shorthand that might have been hard for the television audience to follow. Mr. Clinton, who has a reputation as far quicker on his feet, stuck to a few themes in promoting his record.

Mr. Clinton was firm when questioned about his record. Asked how he avoided being influenced by large campaign contributors, Mr. Clinton said, ''I try to articulate my positions as clearly as possible, tell them what I stand for, and let them decide whether to support me or not.''

Mr. Clinton noted that he had fought the National Rifle Association and tobacco companies, saying, ''Sometimes you just have to do that because you know it's right for the country.''

But Mr. Dole said the President had taken large amounts of money from labor unions and Hollywood. ''If these are not special interests, then I've got a lot to learn,'' Mr. Dole said.

Mr. Clinton suggested that Mr. Dole had been subject to undue influence by tobacco companies and by ''polluters,'' even allowing polluting companies to write legislation.

When Mr. Lehrer posed one of the most-anticipated questions of the evening -- whether Mr. Dole had difficulties with anything personal about Mr. Clinton -- the Republican candidate all but ignored it, talking again about his economic program.

And then he made a joke. ''My blood pressure's lower, my weight, my cholesterol,'' he said. ''But I will not make health an issue in this campaign.'' It was a lift from Mr. Reagan, who defused concerns about his age in a 1984 debate with Walter F. Mondale by saying he would not make his opponent's youth and inexperience an issue in the campaign.

Mr. Dole briefly turned serious then, saying: ''I don't like to get into personal matters. As far as I'm concerned, this is a campaign on issues.''

Seeking to cast the contest in terms of trust and character, he said his greatest strength was that ''Bob Dole keeps his word.''

''Mr. President, about all you have going for you in this campaign is fear,'' Mr. Dole said, citing Democratic campaign advertising asserting that Mr. Dole would endanger Medicare.

''I know all about poverty and need and taking care of people,'' Mr. Dole said in a reference to his upbringing in rural Kansas and his painful recovery from his war wounds. And he tried to extend the question of trustworthiness to his plan to cut taxes while still balancing the budget by 2002.

''If I couldn't cut taxes and balance the budget,'' Mr. Dole said, ''I wouldn't look you in the eye and tell you this is good for America.''

Mr. Clinton did not directly address Mr. Dole's veiled questioning of his trustworthiness. Instead, Mr. Clinton said the central element of his campaign was his argument that his ''plan for the 21st century is the better plan,'' citing his support for changes in education, health care, welfare and small-scale tax cuts.

On a personal issue for Mr. Clinton -- the Whitewater case -- the President was asked if he intended to grant pardons to anyone involved in the matter. ''There has been no consideration of it, no discussion of it,'' he said.

On foreign policy, an issue that has not drawn much attention in the campaign, Mr. Dole noted that he had ''supported the President, I thought he was right'' on Bosnia, the North American Free Trade Agreement and other trade issues. But he said Mr. Clinton's overall foreign policy looked like ''an ad hoc foreign policy.''

Recalling the summit meeting of Middle East leaders at the White House last week, Mr. Dole said, ''It seemed to me, just as an observer, that before you'd call somebody to America, you'd have some idea what the end result might be.''

''We have lost credibility around the world,'' Mr. Dole said.

Mr. Clinton insisted that ''we have a very consistent policy in the Middle East,'' to support the security of Israel, the peace process and those who are willing to take risks for peace.

As part of a drive by the Dole campaign to rattle the President, Billy R. Dale, whom Mr. Clinton dismissed from the White House travel office and who now works for Mr. Dole, was seated in the first row, facing Mr. Clinton's lectern. He was one row and four seats away from Hillary Rodham Clinton and said he had been given a ticket by Mr. Dole.

''It's just a pleasure to be here,'' Mr. Dale said before the event began. ''I'm not here to shake up the President, just to see the debate.''

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 1 of the National edition with the headline: CLINTON AND DOLE, FACE TO FACE, SPAR OVER MEDICARE AND TAXES. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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