Believing that his best defense is a good offense, Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton on Tuesday shrugged off Republican attacks against him and his wife and insisted the election will hinge on the economic issues that he is raising.
To bolster that position, Democrats launched a barrage of television commercials in Houston, site of the GOP convention, and Washington, D.C., comparing Clinton`s record on taxes and job creation to President Bush`s.
Beginning, ”And now a short break for the facts,” one ad seeks to blunt the Republican charge that Clinton will raise taxes. It says that Bush
”signed into law the second-biggest tax increase in American history”
while the Arkansas tax burden per person is the second-lowest in the country.
The second ad takes advantage of new federal statistics released Tuesday that show Arkansas led the nation in private sector job growth over the last year while the U.S. as a whole lost more than a half-million private sector jobs.
Despite continued gloomy news for the nation`s economy, the Clinton camp expects Bush to get a bounce of 10 to 15 percentage points in the polls as the result of the GOP convention, which would trim Clinton`s lead to single digits, said George Stephanopoulos, Clinton`s communications director.
”I think you have to assume it`s going to tighten up,” Clinton agreed later during a series of satellite interviews he gave from the governor`s mansion to several radio and TV stations.
But unlike Michael Dukakis, the 1988 Democratic nominee, Clinton said he maintained his lead in the period between the Democratic and Republican conventions, giving him a cushion of support despite the expected bounce for Bush.
The strongest words at the Republican convention leveled at Clinton and his wife, Hillary, have come from Patrick Buchanan, the conservative commentator who earlier challenged Bush for the nomination and who spoke Monday night.
He said Hillary Clinton championed ”radical feminism” and would team with her husband to impose a ”Clinton and Clinton . . . far Left agenda on the nation.”
Clinton said Buchanan was guilty of ”extreme, extreme right-wing rhetoric and personal venom and gross distortion of my wife`s record.”
”Pat Buchanan in his life has never done as much as Hillary has to strengthen families and children,” Clinton said about his wife, a lawyer who is on leave from chairing the Children`s Defense Fund.
In his speech Monday night, former President Ronald Reagan sought to turn a famous remark from the 1988 campaign against Clinton, saying the Arkansas governor had compared himself to Thomas Jefferson. ”I knew Thomas
Jefferson,” Reagan joked, ”. . . and Governor, you`re no Thomas Jefferson.” Clinton, however said he never compared himself to Jefferson. ”Mr. Reagan has always been willing to make things up to make a good line, and he did that (Monday night), but it was pretty funny,” Clinton said.
But Clinton said the Democrats, for now, are not going to respond in kind to the Republicans.
”They know they`ve got the worst economic record in 50 years,” he said. ”They can`t run on their record. They can`t run on President Bush`s vision for the future, so their only option is to just attack us.”
”The real issue is how are we going to get jobs and income growth and affordable health care for all Americans and real educational opportunities and how are we going to challenge the American people to change so that we can compete and win in this global economy of ours.”
