Anatomy of a Smear

• Share

(2 of 2)

Few people were paying attention -- except George Bush. In daily meetings with his top political advisers, the President pushed staffers to find ways to exploit Dornan's charges. Most of his advisers, deterred by Dornan's loose- cannon reputation and lack of proof, at first shied away from the allegations. But Bush just "wouldn't let go," says a top adviser, adding that the charges played on the President's aversion to anything he considers unpatriotic -- "like the flag-burning thing."

Thus when Dornan and three other right-wing Congressmen called on Bush and Baker in the White House at 8 a.m. last Tuesday, they found a most attentive listener in the President. One of the Congressmen claimed the Moscow and antiwar issues could "kill Clinton." The very next day Bush was on the King show demanding that his opponent come clean about his trip to the U.S.S.R. In a phrase heavy with innuendo, the President added, "I don't want to tell you what I really think, because I don't have the facts . . . but to go to Moscow one year after Russia crushed Czechoslovakia, not remember who you saw . . . I really think the answer is, level with the American people."

Sharply criticized in the press, and even by some prominent Republicans, Bush promptly backed off his unsubstantiated criticisms of the Moscow trip. But he redoubled his attacks on the Democrat's antiwar record. Coming on the eve of the crucial first debate, the apparent aim of the Bush strategy was to sow new doubts about Clinton's trustworthiness and rattle the Democrat into making fresh gaffes. But the ploy, smacking as it does of dirty tricks, could well backfire. "This kind of attack makes Bush look more strident and less presidential," says Ed Rollins, a former Republican strategist. "Unless Bush does something that suddenly convinces voters he would be a different President in his second term, Clinton could win with a landslide."