THE WORST PUBLIC PERFORMANCES OF 1996

1 Bob Dole. At one point in his quest for the presidency, the Republican candidate told a crowd that as the head of the Red Cross, wife Elizabeth had seen many natural disasters, "and I'm not including my campaign in that." Ah, but there was a calamity at every turn. There was his stubborn insistence that tobacco was not necessarily addictive. There was the premature release of his concession speech on Election Night. And, of course, there was the symbol of his campaign, the Chico--as in California, not Marx--pratfall. On the very same day that Dole landed on his back after...