(5 of 5)
While Dole has been trapped in a vacuum of his own making--no policies, no message--Clinton has plugged away with two new family-values proposals a week. They are popular, conservative, small-bore measures designed to show his concern over truancy, deadbeat dads, burning churches and whatever else is polling well. "You guys [in the press] don't always pay much attention," says a Clinton adviser, "but people eat this stuff up."
This may help explain why Clinton, despite what Dole calls the "drip, drip, drip" of Whitewater, is still about 15 points ahead in most polls. Voters are making sophisticated, even jaded judgments in favor of Clinton. Half believe the President is misleading them about Whitewater and Filegate, but many don't much care. More than half of Americans approve of Clinton's job performance. Unless he is directly implicated in wrongdoing, voters seem ready to give him the benefit of the doubt. They may not be fully comfortable with him so much as impressed by his ability to stay afloat.
--With reporting by Jeffrey H. Birnbaum/ Washington and Tamala M. Edwards with Dole