The GOP Strategy: Opponent Al and Nemesis Clinton

With the lack of substantive attacks that can be made, the only option is to make attacks on personality a key factor. The problem is that for the last eight years everyone has joked that Gore doesn’t have a personality – he has not been involved in the scandals. So that takes us back to square one: Bill Clinton.

The personal attacks against Bill Clinton are nothing new, the GOP has done enough digging over the last decade to provide negative ammunition far beyond the 2000 election. In 1992 voters were treated to allegations of draft dodging, pot smoking and extra-marital affairs. These stories were followed later by the Whitewater affair, Paula Jones, and then Lewinsky. The fanatical hunger for scandal from right-wingers fed a small industry between investigators and reporters, based on scraps of rumor. The GOP extremists seemed willing to seize on any detail and argue anything in order to construct Clinton as an immoral bogeyman. It is as if they were on some sort of mission to pursue what they believed to be the ‘true’ Clinton.

What is it about Clinton that the GOP hates so fiercely? Maybe it is because he ousted Bush and brought to an end the era of Reaganism. Maybe it is because Clinton represented a new generation in presidential politics, with a different set of values. Whatever the reason, it became apparent with Kenneth Starr’s obsessive investigation just what lengths the GOPers would go to in order to frame private matters into issues of national importance. If anything this persistence has undermined the credibility of the anti-Clinton message. Trying to tie Gore into these issues will not hamper his chances in the election, now the voters can see through the tactical nature of all the allegations.

Finally the GOP should have learned its lesson. The anti-Clinton agenda didn’t work in 1992 or 1996 – Clinton won both times. If the anti-Clinton rhetoric didn’t work against Clinton, what makes the Republicans think it can work against Gore. However, such reasoning is likely to fall on deaf ears, and for the foreseeable future it looks likely that the Bush camp will continue to cling onto their Clinton fixation.