THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 6, 1996 TAG: 9611060597
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: Decision 96
SOURCE: BY WARREN FISKE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 195 lines
Americans set aside concerns about character Tuesday and elected President Bill Clinton to a second term filled with promise, peril and uncertainty.
With his sweeping Electoral College victory, Clinton, 50, became the first Democrat to be re-elected to the White House since Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The victory also represented a final campaign for Clinton, once a boy wonder, a 32-year-old governor of Arkansas. With no higher offices to seek, Clinton is free to act for the first time without calculating how his decisions could affect his career.
``Today the American people have spoken,'' Clinton told a jubilant hometown crowd outside the state Capitol in Little Rock, Ark., shortly after midnight. ``They have affirmed our course. They have told us to go forward. America has told every one of us - Democrats, Republicans and Independents - loud and clear, it is time to put politics aside, join together, and get the job done for America's future.''
It was probably a final campaign as well for Republican Bob Dole, the longtime Senate leader whose dream of reaching the nation's top political post will never be realized.
Dole, in a concession speech at 11:25 p.m., indicated he would remain in the public eye. ``For any of you who wonder what my plans are going to be for the future,'' he told supporters in Washington, ``I'm going to sit back for a few days, and then I'm going to stand up for what I think is right for America.''
Independent candidate Ross Perot ran a distant third. His political future depends on whether he can quell an uprising in the Reform Party he founded.
But Tuesday night Perot seemed to be looking ahead to a third try in 2000.
``You and I have to stay on watch,'' he told supporters. ``We have to keep the pressure on . . . take a little break, and then we'll climb back in the ring.''
Clinton was on a pace to match if not exceed the 370 electoral votes he won in 1992, and he was close to the majority popular vote that eluded him in 1992.
Perot was gaining about 8 percent of the national vote, less than half his 19 percent 1992 total.
The promise in the Clinton victory is that he is in a position to put aside partisanship and work out long-range solutions to federal spending, Medicare and Social Security with a Congress that appeared to remain under Republican control.
The peril is that the president returns to Washington as an unprecedented number of investigations await concerning his personal finances, political fund-raising and his administration's use of FBI files.
And the uncertainty is over Clinton's plans for his final term. The man who once promised a complete overhaul of the nation's health care system has scaled back his proposals this year, declaring that the ``era of big government is over.'' He has offered a few popular reforms but little in the way of grand vision, carefully sidestepping issues such as Medicare and Bosnia.
Clinton's victory ended a relatively quiet election year in which voters broke from a four-year trend of demanding wholesale change in government. With the economy on the mend, interest rates and unemployment low, the stock market high and the nation at peace, Americans voted to stay the course.
Polls showed that voters had a far more charitable view of the federal government than they did in 1992, when Republicans lost their 12-year lock on the presidency, and in 1994, when Democrats lost control of Congress for the first time in 40 years. Surveys showed a 10 percent drop in the number of Americans who believe government is always inefficient and a 10 percent increase in the number who believe politicians genuinely care what people think.
The favorable conditions no doubt helped Clinton overcome nagging questions about his character. Newspapers almost weekly blared new developments in a special prosecutor's investigation of the president's real estate dealings. During the closing weeks of the campaign, Clinton went to lengths to avoid comment on revelations of improper fund-raising on behalf of his campaign.
``Where's the outrage?'' Dole demanded of voters during the final days of the campaign. The small movement of voters that ensued did little to help Dole, but aided Perot in doubling his support at the end.
``I think the campaign came down to a question of performance vs. character, and performance trumped character,'' said Thomas R. Morris, a political scientist and president of Emory & Henry University.
Indeed, more than three out of four voters said Clinton's record was more important than concerns about his character, according to a national poll late last month by the Pew Research Center.
Character and record was hotly debated at South Hampton Roads polls Tuesday.
``I don't trust Clinton,'' said Cheryl Stevenson, 33, of Virginia Beach. ``I'm not saying he is guilty, but there's so much smoke around him - the FBI files, Whitewater - and that stuff just doesn't wash with me. Where there's that much smoke, there's got to be fire.''
But Jo Johnson, 50, a Navy buyer from Virginia Beach, put aside such qualms and voted for Clinton. ``If we looked at every candidate on the basis of character, we'd end up not trusting everybody,'' he said.
Voters elected Clinton in 1992 despite his lack of military service and his tacit admissions that he had not always been faithful to his wife.
``The character issue was played out in 1992,'' said Robert Holsworth, a political scientist at Virginia Commonwealth University. ``This year, Dole was unable to give an overriding reason why an incumbent should be thrown out when there's a strong economy.''
Clinton was a master on the campaign trail, fervently conveying to audiences his working-class roots and empathy for their day-to-day concerns. Dole, stiff and taciturn by nature, had problems conveying a sense of warmth and caring.
Clinton ``offers help for young adults and the elderly,'' said Rowena Quintana, 31, a divorced Virginia Beach home cleaner with three daughters. Quintana voted for the first time Tuesday. ``When I get old, I'm going to need someone to take care of me.''
Voters were slow to credit Dole with his undisputed leadership qualities during his 35-year career on Capitol Hill. Polls showed that voters described Clinton as a stronger leader, a more caring person, and bestowed with better judgment in a crisis than Dole.
Age was also always in the back of voters' minds. Dole, at 73, is perhaps the last in a generation of presidential candidates who served in World War II. Clinton, at 50, is the first baby boomer elected to the White House and the only president to admit trying marijuana in college.
On the stump, Clinton talked about building ``a bridge to the 21st century,'' while Dole often reviewed his four-decade voting record. Voters, by almost a 2-to-1 margin in polls, credited Clinton with having better ideas.
Jesse Staton, a 40-year-old private school teacher in Chesapeake, said age was a major reason why he supported Clinton. ``You need stamina for that job,'' he said.
The centerpiece of Dole's campaign - a pledge for a 15 percent tax cut - was received skeptically. A majority of voters, according to polls, agreed with Clinton that the tax cuts would drive up the national deficit.
But exactly what Clinton plans during his second term remains unclear. The president, who advisers say has a deep desire to carve a niche in history, made few promises and no calls for sweeping reforms this fall.
With Congress remaining in conservative hands and voters firm on balancing the budget and putting government on a diet, there appears to be little room for major spending initiatives in the next four years.
Advisers say Clinton hopes to put the nation on course for a balanced budget sometime early in the 21st century. But his success may depend on his willingness to back unpopular cuts and reforms in in Medicare - steps he has been reluctant to embrace.
Ralph Reed, executive director of the Chesapeake-based Christian Coalition, said he was not surprised by the Clinton victory. He said he was pleased that Republican membership in the Senate appeared to increase, saying GOP numbers would provide protection against any liberal nominations Clinton might make to the Supreme Court.
``It's clear Republicans will hold on to Congress,'' he said. ``To do that while we were swimming upstream with a poorly conceived presidential campaign is a substantial achievement.'' MEMO: Staff writers Bill Reed, Dave Addis and Paul Clancy and The
Associated Press contributed to this story. ILLUSTRATION: ASSOCIATED PRESS photo
President Clinton - with his daughter, Chelsea, his wife, Hillary
Rodham Clinton, and Vice President Al Gore - celebrates his victory
in Little Rock, Ark., Tuesday night.
Graphic
CLINTON'S PRIORITIES
Here are proposals that President Clinton has said he would
pursue in a second term:
Abortion: Continue abortion rights. Would sign a late-term
abortion ban if it included an exemption for the health of the
mother.
Affirmative action: Change programs to increase minority business
opportunities without federal set-asides.
Education: Expand Head Start, provide federal money for school
renovation and connect classrooms to the Internet. Offer a
$1,500-a-year tuition tax credit for up to two years, or $10,000 in
annual tax deductions for college expenses. Supports national
standards and steps toward public school choice and charter schools.
Supports school uniforms. Opposes private school vouchers.
Family medical leave: Expand it to include doctor and dental
visits.
Gun control: Prohibit gun purchases by perpetrators of domestic
violence.
Illegal drugs: Stiffen mandatory penalties for those who sell
drugs to children. Also wants to improve drug-trafficking
information-sharing with other countries and greater role for the
military in combatting the flow of drugs.
Illiteracy: Start a program to get children reading by the end of
third grade.
Immigration: Implement a modest decrease in legal immigration.
While opposed to social services for illegal immigrants, he is not
against allowing their children to attend school.
Job training: Combine many federal job-training programs into
grants for workers to use for tuition or training.
Medicare: Cut spending growth from the current 9 percent to 7.3
percent a year.
Missile defense system: Continue development, but put off any
decision on deployment until 2000.
Supreme Court: Appoint nominees who support abortion rights and
would protect citizens from undue intrusion by the government.
Taxes: Enact targeted tax cuts, such as on capital gains tax for
the sale of a home and a $500 per-child tax credit.
Toxic cleanup: Target two-thirds of all Superfund sites for
cleanup by 2000.
Graphic
THE VOTE ACROSS THE NATION
Unofficial results
KEYWORDS: PRESIDENTIAL RACE ELECTION RESULTS by CNB