In the article, "The Trouble With
Character" from Time magazine , writer Richard Stengel describes Bob
Dole's attacks on President Bill Clinton's character during the second
Presidential debate and explains why Dole's criticisms did not affect Clinton.
Stengel begins the article by discussing
how American parents do not want their children to aspire to become President
as much as they used to. Most Americans
feel that someone else should do the job, and this person is no moralistic
model. Stengel says that the people's
negative portrait of the President is demonstrated in the roles the President
plays in various movies and novels.
Stengel then
discusses the second Presidential debate in which Dole said that Clinton
"single-handedly contaminated the highest office in the land" and is
the leading cause of the public's distrust of the government. The focus of
Dole's campaign was not Clinton's issues, but his moral pertinence. The press were surprised by the fact that
most people think that Dole has a better character than Clinton, but they still
prefer Clinton as President. This notion
comes from the reasoning that most Americans are only concerned with whether or
not the country and its citizens are taken care of, and so disregard the
President's moral imperfections which, in the people's opinion, have very
little to do with the issues. So the
President can cheat on his taxes or even his wife and the Americans will
overlook it as long as he is getting the job done. Claims such as these lead some to believe
that Americans' standards of acceptable moral behavior are going down.
Stengel mentions
examples of different presidents and the issues that gave them a bad reputation
to demonstrate the fact that the people's expectations of the President have
fallen. When it comes to politics,
Americans are becoming more European - that is, they are becoming more and more
tolerant of the flaws in their leaders.
This is why Dole's complaints are ineffective in convincing voters.
In my opinion, I
think that Stengel is correct in saying that the reason why Dole's attacks are
not working is voters are not concerned with the President's personal
shortcomings, but rather his capability of running the country, and the two are
not always closely related. I think that
Bob Dole is going about the whole issue all wrong, and his tactics are not
practical and may even backfire. He is
trying to make Clinton look bad by insulting his character, but in doing so,
Dole is revealing a lot about his own.
Take for instance
the issue of Clinton and his playful attitude regarding his use of drugs. Dole is using a personal attack on Bill
Clinton to make the constituents think that Clinton is a drug user saying that
he used drugs during the '70s. I think
the real issue here is not Bill Clinton's problem, but the question of what we
are going to do to stop drugs. Dole made
such an effort to attack Clinton, but I never heard what Dole had to say about
the issue, and what he is planning to do about it. Looking from his family's point of view and
taking into consideration the negative impact drugs has had in his family, I
think that Clinton is definitely concerned about drug use in America.
I agree with
Stengel's belief that this is the way a majority of the voters feel about Clinton. The lack of conviction that Dole claims is
Clinton's character flaw is actually his personal strength. Voters see his being indecisive as
"still searching for the answer."
Instead of clinging to the same traditional values and principles,
Clinton is flexible and can adapt to new concepts and vary along with the
times. Like Stengel said, the citizens'
expectations of the President are changing and I think the country needs a
leader who can keep up with a changing world.
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