Clinton 1996/2016: "Where's the Outrage?" Redux
By Carl M. Cannon
In the waning hours of his 1996 quest to dislodge Bill Clinton from the White House, Bob Dole simply lost it one day. At a rally in Houston, Dole recited a litany of Clinton administration abuses, fundraising scandals, and assorted controversies before launching into an irate mantra: “Where’s the outrage?”
“Can you imagine former President Bush doing one of those things?” screeched Kansas’ senior senator. “And you never imagine Bob Dole doing one of those things, either. So where’s the outrage? Where’s the outrage?! When will the voters start to focus?”
It’s early in the 2016 game, but when Republican presidential candidates discuss the myriad pay-for-play allegations swirling around Hillary Clinton and her family’s foundation, they sound as frustrated as Bob Dole did during the autumn of his discontent.
“She tweets about women’s rights in this country and takes money from governments that deny women the most basic human rights,” complains Californian Carly Fiorina.
“At the very least, these revelations present a clear conflict of interest,” adds Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. “I call on Hillary Clinton to return the donations from foreign governments. Until she does, how can the American people trust her with another position of power?”
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker channeled in his inner Bob Dole when discussing the thousands of emails Clinton put on a private server when she was secretary of state and then deep-sixed later. “I think it’s an outrage,” Walker said, “that Democrats as well as Republicans should be concerned about.”
As he should know better than most, outrage is rarely a bipartisan reaction in U.S. politics these days. So far, Democratic Party leaders are swallowing any qualms about the Clinton controversies. Rank-and-file Democrats indicate to pollsters that they’re accustomed to insalubrious behavior by Bill and Hillary. But will that acquiescence last?
Back in 1996, California pollster Mervin Field told me a month before Dole’s “Where’s the outrage?” Texas meltdown that Clinton’s re-election campaign reminded him of 1972. That year, Democratic nominee George McGovern tried to invoke the dark side of Richard Nixon’s persona. “Do you really believe,” McGovern essentially asked the American people, “that Dick Nixon has the character to be president?”
This was the same approach taken by Bob Dole. In both years it proved to be the wrong question. The answer, to paraphrase the voters’ response, was: “No, probably not, but he already is president, and the question I’m addressing on Election Day is whether he’s done a good job in office—and whether his re-election will make my life better.”
Bill Clinton understood that basic dynamic, which is why he liked telling the American people—and this is a direct quote, not a paraphrase—“I’m working for you every day.” Voters knew this to be true. A decade later, as she begins her second presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton is using similar language. The problem is that many Americans now make unwelcome associations with such rhetoric when it comes from a Clinton.
For starters, it’s too similar to the words Bill used when the Monica Lewinsky scandal threatened his presidency. (“These allegations are false,” Clinton said disingenuously, “and I need to go back to work for the American people.”) The bigger issue is that it now is apparent that a couple that arrived in Washington, D.C., in 1993 not owning a house has parlayed “public service” into a personal fortune estimated as high as $200 million. It seems they are working for themselves, too.
All of this serves to set up a fascinating social science experiment next year: Will the character questions employed so utterly unsuccessfully by George McGovern and Bob Dole work against a presidential nominee who is not, in fact, already in office? Or does Mrs. Clinton’s stint as first lady and her contiguous tenure as a senator and a secretary of state make her seem, in essence, like an incumbent?
Public opinion surveys provide evidence for either proposition. Asked in a new Quinnipiac University Pollwhether they find Hillary Clinton “honest and trustworthy,” 53 percent of respondents answered no, with only 39 percent saying yes. If the current trend holds—that trend being new revelations each week of heretofore unexplored evidence of Clinton family avarice—those numbers seem unlikely to improve. Yet the same poll shows Hillary Clinton leading every announced and unannounced Democratic opponent by huge margins, and running comfortably ahead of the entire GOP field.
“Can you get low marks on honesty and still be a strong leader? Sure you can,” says Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac poll. “Hillary Clinton crushes her Democratic rivals and keeps the GOP horde at arm’s length.”
That’s one way of looking at it. But a new Field Poll suggests another:
It seems that Clinton’s popularity among Democrats in trend-setting California has declined in the last few months. In February, 59 percent of Democrats named Hillary as their choice for the 2016 nomination. In late May, that number was down to 53. More intriguing, those wavering Democrats didn’t prefer any of the announced candidates from their own party, or even Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the current darling of the progressive left. (Her numbers actually declined, too.) They went instead into the “undecided” camp, which has burgeoned from 7 percent to 22 percent. Could those dissatisfied Democratic voters be waiting for a certain mega-state governor who has run for president before? A certain California favorite son?
What about it, Jerry Brown?
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