Good chemistry, Paul Tsongas liked to say when asked why he and his rival Bill Clinton got on so well. Clinton would point out that he and Tsongas were the two candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination offering broad, serious economic plans. That was in New Hampshire barely a month ago -- a lifetime in the compacted nominating calendar. By last week the chemistry had turned combustible as each struggled to define the other in negative terms, an exchange that revealed as much about themselves as each other.
After last Tuesday's contests, the former Senator from Massachusetts and the Arkansas Governor emerged as joint front runners. Bob Kerrey, losing badly everywhere, quit the race, and Tom Harkin's war chest is empty. Jerry Brown's narrow win in Colorado will allow him to continue receiving federal matching funds to wage a guerrilla operation.
Tsongas' victories in Utah, Maryland and Washington demonstrated that he could prosper outside New England. Clinton's big win in Georgia was his first victory of the year, but the nominating process puts him in a strong position for this week's Super Tuesday contests. His treasury is the plumpest of all, his organization the most robust -- and with seven of the 11 contests in Southern and Border states, he has the home-field advantage.
Last week's outcome, however, left Clinton and Tsongas, both cerebral candidates with a strong sense of purpose, scrapping like ward pols. In Florida Tsongas' best hope in the South, Clinton aired a commercial questioning Tsongas' commitment to maintaining Social Security benefits. When Tsongas accused Clinton of misstatements and scare tactics, Clinton's aides distributed a fact sheet showing that Tsongas had in fact proposed an amendment eight years ago that would have frozen cost of living increases in benefit programs for a year.
Then a suddenly bellicose Tsongas attacked Clinton personally as a "cynical and unprincipled politician," a "pander bear" eager to promise everything to everyone. Jetting around the South, Clinton told reporters at a late-night press conference in Nashville that Tsongas was the real panderer, with Wall Street the prime beneficiary, and that Tsongas had belied his image as a "truth teller" by lying about the impact of Clinton's position on a middle-class tax cut. A Tsongas ad had implied that the reduction would worsen the deficit. Clinton's plan would offset the loss with a higher rate for affluent taxpayers.
But the fact that Clinton's camp has been striving for weeks to undermine Tsongas' credibility is testimony to the way the ostensibly cool Clinton is suffering from the pressure of the campaign. The furor over his alleged romance with Gennifer Flowers and his draft status during the Vietnam War nearly sank Clinton's candidacy. Though he staged a gutsy comeback, neither his campaign nor his image has fully recovered from the trauma. Says his campaign manager, David Wilhelm: "Because of what happened to us, we lost for the time being the aura of the serious, thoughtful candidate."