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For Clinton, winning in '96 required reverting to the themes he'd pushed successfully in '92. He had to adopt everything the nation thought was good about Republicanism and then go further and paint the Republicans themselves, or at least the Gingrichites, as beyond the centrist pale. The Great Repositioning began with a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign that debuted in the summer of 1995 in selected, midsize media markets--away from the national press corps' cynical gaze. The very first spot, aired on June 27, telegraphed the President's strategy: Clinton wouldn't be out-toughed. In that ad a solemn President stared at the camera and said, "Deadly assault weapons off our streets; 100,000 more police on the streets; extend the death penalty. That's how we'll protect America." From there the President's team directed a family-values campaign that routinely tarred the G.O.P. as the party of the rich.
It wasn't just intuition. The strategy was guided by a mid-1995 survey conducted by strategist Mark Penn. The "Neuropersonality Poll," as Penn called it, attempted to map the psyche of the American voter and became the campaign's blueprint. Armed with those data, every presidential remark, every action every gesture was pretested and scripted. No detail was too small. Rather than amble off Air Force One, Clinton marched; the campaign's most famous line, about "building a bridge to the 21st century," was intoned because "building a bridge to the future" tested less well; Clinton vacationed at Yellowstone National Park because the polls said Americans like outdoorsy vacations.
By Aug. 28, 1996, when Clinton said, "Our job is to give people the tools to make the most of their own lives," the echo was distinctive. He was exactly where he had been four years before, when, speaking equally of rights and responsibilities, he seemed to realize instinctively that voters wanted a minimalist but compassionate national government. So Clinton went forward by reaching back to the preliberal American tradition that sought to empower citizens with programs like the G.I. Bill, the Homestead Act and Land Grant colleges.
With the invaluable help of Dick Morris, the postideological strategist who had guided his 1982 comeback as Governor of Arkansas after a devastating defeat two years earlier, Clinton crafted a series of positions and actions that fixed him firmly in that holiest of political spaces, the center. In standing against Republican proposals to restrain the budget-busting cost of Medicare, Clinton appeared both compassionate and firm. In embracing the G.O.P.'s call for a balanced budget (in July 1995, fully eight months before Dole's nomination), he laid claim to fiscal sanity, an issue virtually owned by the Republicans since budgets were first adopted. From there a series of small-bore but powerfully symbolic pronouncements followed. In August 1995 he urged a crackdown on tobacco advertising directed at kids. Calls for school uniforms, teen curfews, V chips to block violent television shows, and a series of proposals aimed at women voters specifically (including bills designed to increase child-support collections, extend the family-leave act and mandate a longer hospital stay after giving birth) guaranteed that the gender gap, already in Clinton's favor, would grow to historic proportions.
THE POWELL FACTOR