ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, August 27, 1996 TAG: 9608270146
SECTION: WELCOME STUDENTS PAGE: 70 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
TYPE: COMMENTARY
SOURCE: MIKE CONNOLLY SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
As of August, Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole is being trounced in public opinion polls by Bill Clinton.
This fall, in all likelihood, he and his peppy running mate will fall flat on their respective backsides. No doubt most students will feel as contentedly alienated and chilled-out as ever, regardless of the election's outcome. Big surprise.
We college students are left out of the political process for two major reasons: First, it's campus-cool to declare one's disillusionment and therefore pay no attention, and second, we are morons without the attention span necessary to make an informed political decision short of one fed us by MTV News anchor Kurt Loder.
So here it is: The Official Generation X 1996 Presidential Election Voter Guide.
In one corner is Bill Clinton, the Democratic incumbent, the nice guy, hillbilly president, who, to paraphrase our first chief executive, "cannot tell the truth." Behind him are a strong economy, lower crime rates and the media.
In Dole's corner, there is an unproven message, a compromising reputation and in-party strife. But Dole also has something in his party that American youth, in its pot-smoking, long-haired heyday, used to admire - ideas.
But again, those ideas are probably too little, too late, and too uncool to matter to us in the current political environment. Dole's just too far behind.
That means Citizen Dole is going to have to play monumental catch-up between now and November. This political trick has been successfully pulled off in the past by presidents Clinton, George Bush and Jimmy Carter, and almost achieved by countless other politicians.
There are two ways Dole can come back from a severe deficit in a political campaign. The first option is for him to go negative. This is the plan I believe Dole will most likely take, and he will lose because of it. He will, in his speeches and advertising, talk about the president as if he were a child-molesting ax murderer. Now that type of rhetoric was acceptable from Clinton, an affable fresh face in 1992; Bush, the 1988 political equivalent of a human appendix; and Carter, the ever-smiling country boy.
But for Dole to turn negative would be disastrous. He already looks like Dracula without the warmth, and he talks as if under the perpetual oppression of a migraine headache. When he comes near, children flee. When he blinks, mirrors crack. When he smiles, trees defoliate and flowers wilt. Citizen Dole is a candidate with the personal charm of an Edgar Allan Poe story. In short, he is a Republican senator.
The bottom line for voters, especially self-described students, is simple: Stick to the issues. This is not a problem for the president, who has already spoken out in favor of school prayer, school uniforms and town curfews, and against same-sex marriages.
Some would call these recent positions of the president "pandering;" others call it "moderation." I prefer "lying."
No intelligent person can believe Clinton honestly plans to follow through on all these conservative proposals any more than he intends to make abortion "safe, legal and rare." He says what he says because he thinks it will get him elected. It probably will, and he'll be able to have another MTV Inaugural Ball so all of us in Gen X can feel like we're a part of something.
But issues should still count in this day and age. Dole has always supported a balanced budget. Clinton opposed it. Dole has always supported tax cuts. Clinton raised taxes on almost every single American in 1993.
Dole has supported the right to life of the unborn. Clinton has enacted executive orders and appointed federal judges that have aided the cause of the 25-year-old silent holocaust.
Dole has supported common-sense education reform for 20 years. Clinton prefers to pander to the teachers unions and throw money at problems.
Neither candidate has much of a vision, sad to say. Clinton's philosophy is governed by a boggled, muffled sense of fairness, and Dole's is governed by an equally cloudy notion of responsibility. In the end, the election will come down to a choice between feel-good pandering and nauseating honesty.
Contrary to popular opinion, neither man will steer the country into the heavens nor drive it to hell.
It's just four years, and, after all, we survived Carter (most of us, anyway). Voters, students especially, need to open their eyes and truly look at the two choices before us, and decide. Dole may be completely out of touch, and listening to him speak may be an Olympic-caliber endurance test, but we also know for a fact that Bill Clinton is lying to us.
If you don't care, re-elect him. If it irks you that he lies, that he raises taxes, refuses to balance the budget and always super-sizes his McDonald's value meals, then take another look at Dole, painful as it sounds.
Just don't blindly cast a vote for Clinton because you think he's "cooler" and he said what kind of underpants he wears. At least be able to tell your friends you made an informed decision rather than retaining your political philosophy from "Singled Out's" Dr. Jenny McCarthy, Ph.D.
Mike Connolly, 20, is a senior from Fairfax who intends to be a writer when he grows up -"the published kind." The political science major and former editorial page editor of the student-run Collegiate Times will write a column in its pages this fall. His political acumen has been nurtured amid his big, well-connected Republican family. Connolly, who is majoring in English, spent the summer in Blacksburg, delivering pizzas for Papa John's.
LENGTH: Medium: 99 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Connolly.by CNB