BILL CLINTON wasn't on the ballot yesterday, but he lost big all the same.
In 1992, New Hampshire Democrats fell for Clinton's denial of the affair he had conspired with Gennifer Flowers to cover up and rescued his campaign with a strong second-place finish in the primary. They kept Clinton alive, and we all know what followed — corruption, scandals, obstruction of justice, impeachment.
But yesterday, the Democrats redeemed themselves. After his big win in Iowa and Clinton's lavish praise in the State of the Union address, Al Gore was riding high. He expected New Hampshire to send him into overdrive. Instead it sent him sprawling. Whatever Bill Bradley thought before last week, he knows now that there is no running a kinder, gentler campaign for president. Especially not against Al Gore, who once described his political M.O. as "rip[ping] the lungs out of anybody who's in the race." Gore and his people were nasty these last few days — when Senator Bob Kerrey, a Medal of Honor recipient who lost a leg in Vietnam, showed up to campaign for Bradley, Gore's goons splattered mud at him and taunted him with "Cripple!" They will grow nastier still.
![]() Bill Bradley (left) and Vice President Al Gore (right) shake hands after a debate at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, N.H. |
Bradley won't stoop to their level, and perhaps that will spell his ultimate defeat. But if he keeps asking the question that he should have raised from the start — "How can we believe that you will tell the truth as president if you won't tell the truth as a candidate?" — he will help voters stay focused on the real stakes in this election: More Clintonism vs. something cleaner.
Those are the stakes on the Republican side, too. John McCain won big not because New Hampshire swooned for his campaign finance "reform," but because it loved the idea of voting for someone who seems to be everything Clinton/Gore are not: honorable, principled, incorruptible. Then again, it didn't hurt that McCain spent far more time in the Granite State than any other candidate — 65 days since last March. That's an advantage he won't have in South Carolina, the next battleground.
There has only ever been one argument for George W. Bush's campaign: his electability. Yesterday that electability took a blow to the solar plexus. Bush is still the favorite — the GOP establishment is behind him and he has $35 million in the bank. One more such loss, though, and all bets are off.
Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.
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