Dole left the NBC studio fuming – and his fellow Republicans puzzling over his performance. He seemed testy, the ““mean’’ hatchet man of old. He looked out of touch, quarreling with the medical consensus that nicotine is addictive. He came across as a politician in the pocket of Big Tobacco. At best, Dole appeared a throwback to an earlier era, when World War II soldiers lived for their next Lucky Strike. ““It was pretty bad,’’ said Lyn Nofziger, a crusty Reagan aide who’s jousted with Democrats and the press for years. ““You sure have to wonder why.''
Yes, you do. The answers are personal and political. Dole can’t stomach the idea that he needs to be ““handled,’’ and so there was no one to sternly remind him that Couric can ask tough questions. Beyond that, Dole thinks that addiction is for weaklings, that tobacco is just another commodity and that cigarettes are just another product worthy of protection from predatory regulators. A legislator at heart, the beneficiary of plenty of tobacco cash, Dole remembers when the Democrats wanted to do deals – quietly – to save tobacco. He’s still at sea in this era of talk-show handwringing about emotional issues.
But Dole should have seen this coming. He knows that every presidential contest creates its own unpredictable, unique slogans and symbols. Some are sweeping (““It’s the economy, stupid’’); some are narrow (the parole of a convicted murderer in Massachusetts). But they define the race. Is Joe Camel the Willie Horton of 1996? We’re about to find out.
Conveniently ignoring the Democratic Party’s own history of dependence on tobacco money, President Clinton has been methodically mounting an anti-smoking crusade for nearly a year, championing strict new federal limits on sales of cigarettes to kids. The idea is to drive a ““wedge’’ between Republicans on the take from tobacco companies and suburban swing voters – many of whom are parents.
The Democrats are closing in on several fronts. Clinton has asked that tobacco be regulated like a drug, and proposed Food and Drug Administration rules would ban vending machines and curb advertising aimed at young people. The Justice Department has launched a criminal probe of tobacco-industry executives. And the Democratic National Committee has even taken to sending a costumed character called ““Butt Man’’ to Dole’s rallies. Now, sources tell NEWSWEEK, FDA officials are saying privately that they are under pressure to unveil the final version of the rules by next month. ““That is categori- cally false,’’ says FDA spokesman James O’Hara. But NEWSWEEK sources say the goal is to act before the GOP convenes to nominate Dole in San Diego.
The White House began sharpening this wedge last summer. Attacking teen smoking would play beautifully in California, which has the lowest per capita smoking rate of any state except Utah. The ““tobacco South,’’ Democratic turf since the Civil War, was trending Republican anyway. Having won control of Congress in 1994, the Republicans would now have to deliver on their promises to limit regulation – even when it came to tobacco. The Democrats were suddenly free to be responsible.
There was a minor problem: the wedge was hypocritical. Clinton and the Democrats had taken loads of tobacco money over the years (chart). Until his sister died of lung cancer, Al Gore’s family had even grown the crop in Tennessee, and the GOP ““oppo’’ team notes that he took industry donations throughout his career in Congress.
Democrats still want tobacco money. They just aren’t eager to talk about it. At their Chicago convention, they’ll enjoy Philip Morris’s corporate support, but it will be funneled through the company’s Chicago-based subsidiary, Kraft Foods. Tobacco corporations were among the happy hosts of a huge fund-raiser for Democratic Senate candidates two months ago. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that $65,000 worth of Big Tobacco contributions to a campaign dinner in Washington was rerouted to state parties, thus eluding federal reporting requirements.
But in Dole, Clinton has a near-perfect foil – or victim. One reason is generational. Dole’s wartime army lived on cigarettes. They were one of the few pleasures available as he convalesced from his injuries. He chain-smoked Luckies as a young attorney in Russell, and didn’t finally quit until 1982. But when Bob Dole gave up smoking, he tells friends, he did it cold turkey. ““He thinks everybody should be able to just do that,’’ says Nofziger, who’s known Dole since ‘69.
Politically, Dole has been using tobacco all his Washington life. He spent 35 years in Congress helping Kansas wheat farmers by making common cause with tobacco. True, when his larger interests demanded it, he was capable of taking on the industry. In 1982, for example, he voted to double the excise tax on cigarettes to cut the deficit. But there have been many more favors than confrontations – in both directions. He helped save the entire tobacco price-support system in the early ’80s when Sen. Jesse Helms’s unpopularity threatened to sink it. Dole protected smokeless-tobacco products in the Finance Committee. Quietly but consistently, he has championed what has become the most important sector of the tobacco industry: exports. In 1986, Dole was one of a group of senators who wrote a threatening letter to Hong Kong, which was considering banning smokeless tobacco. In 1987, Dole and Helms met with the South Korean ambassador to lobby against restrictions on American tobacco. In 1988, Dole successfully urged the Reagan administration to investigate Thailand for proposing limits on American brands.
Such service pays. When Dole set up a nonprofit think tank in 1993, tobacco companies pumped $250,000 into the venture. They’ve poured tens of thousands into the Dole Foundation for the disabled and, more recently, into the coffers of the Red Cross, headed by Elizabeth Dole. Dole’s campaign is peopled with corporate lawyers and lobbyists who’ve done business with and for the tobacco industry.
In their own way, Butt Man and the ““oppo’’ guys have stumbled onto a profound issue about the role of government. Bill Clinton believes that Washington must help parents do their job – in this case by keeping cigarettes away from kids. Bob Dole supports voluntary and local restrictions, but thinks government is no substitute for personal responsibility and self-discipline. This is an important debate we ought to hear one day – preferably before November.
Bob Dole
the $250,000 he and his PAC have taken from tobacco since ‘79 doesn’t include thousands more for his charitable Dole Foundation anh his think tank
He took only $6,000 for tobacco in 1992 buyt last year his party collected $424,000. And this May Democrats delivered $65,000 to hard to track state coffers
After Gore’s sister died of cancer the family stopped growing tobacco on their Tennessee farm. From 1979-90 Gore took $16,000 from tobacco interests
CHART KEY DONOR TO DEMOCRATS IN $ TO REPUBLICANS IN $ TOTAL IN $ Phillip Morris 453,500 2,291,776 2,745,276 ADM 819,000 1,682,268 2,501,268 RJR Nabisco 579,900 1,626,757 2,206,757 American Financial 675,000 1,475,000 2,150,000 Atlantic Richfield 732,648 1,336,113 2,068,761 Seagram & Sons 699,614 724,727 1,424,341 U.S. Tobacco 201,308 865,466 1,066,774 Merrill Lynch & Co. 139,300 925,700 1,065,000 Chevron Corp. 347,838 708,422 1,056,260 MCI 569,214 371,870 941,084
