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Another document in Clinger's possession also tends to clear Stephanopoulos of involvement in the hire. Livingstone's resume, a White House source told Time, includes eight names offered as references, many of them mid-level Clinton-Gore operatives. Stephanopoulos is not on the list, which Clinger didn't see fit to release. His partisan ploys just made the scandal seem frivolous.
LESSON NO. 4: SOMETIMES IT PAYS TO BLAME THE PRESS. When Dole went after Couric and the "liberal elite," he was merely falling in line behind the Clinton White House. The week before, Stephanopoulos had gone on a loud campaign to save the soul of American journalism, decrying the responsible news outlets that were rushing to publicize the unsubstantiated gossip and hearsay in the tell-all book by former FBI agent Gary Aldrich, a "congenital liar," thundered Stephanopoulos, whose story "couldn't get past the fact checker at the National Enquirer." Stephanopoulos had a point, and the mainstream media began slinking away from Aldrich. G.O.P. strategists are now divided about whether to invite Aldrich to testify before their committees.
LESSON NO. 5: THE PAST IS NEVER DEAD; IT'S NOT EVEN PAST. A son of the South like Clinton must know William Faulkner's adage by heart. If it ever slipped his mind, events in Washington and Little Rock would bring it rushing back, along with its political corollary: Don't trip over your skeletons. Livingstone and the Filegate scandal, after all, represent the chaos of Clinton's first year in office swarming forth to infect 1996. So too the current Whitewater trial of onetime Clinton cronies Robert Hill and Herby Branscum, who are charged with defrauding a bank in order to make illegal contributions to Clinton's 1990 gubernatorial campaign, allegedly in exchange for state jobs from Clinton. Voters know politicians reward contributors with sweet government positions; they just don't like to be confronted with the seamy details. That's why Branscum, who gave Clinton a cash infusion during his tight 1990 race and became Arkansas' highway commissioner a few weeks later, is so painful to Clinton, who was scheduled to provide video testimony in the case July 7.
For Dole the past is present any time he loses his temper and the country recalls his snarling performances in long-gone campaigns. Another politician might get away with the side-of-the-mouth accusations Dole made on Today. Not Dole. After the show, one Dole adviser contended that his man "wasn't that bad." He was bad enough.
LESSON NO. 6: TAKE THE LEAD AND KEEP MOVING. Not long ago on the campaign trail, Dole asked reporters not to "worry very much about what I say," because "we're trying to get good pictures." They immediately hammered him about his most vulnerable issues. (Reporters on Dole's plane have been joking that each day's news is a coin-toss: heads, tobacco; tails, abortion.) "Obviously, I could do a better job of covering myself," he complained to CNN last week. "I thought the media were on the plane to cover me."