If you watch television, you can definitely tell it is an election year. Instead of micro-Smiling Steve driving around the Lebanon Pharmacy in his Tyco Black Thunder four-wheeler, there's campaign message after campaign message telling the viewers who they should vote for.
A vote for Bob Dolegingrich, according to ads paid for by Clinton/Gore '96, means cuts in Medicare, social security, education, and anything else the government helps fund, in order to pay for Dolegingrich's 15 percent across-the-board tax cut.
In his ads, Bob Dole states that a vote for Clinton means ... well, he has trouble on this one considering the economy if flying. But from what the ads say, Dole exclaims that Clinton is a closet liberal and has a secret agenda aimed at taking over the United States.
On a side note: last week, President Clinton held a press conference in order to vehemently deny the accusation that he was a closet liberal by rehashing -- I probably shouldn't use that word with the President -- his record on welfare reform, balancing the budget, and his campaign promise for a targeted, paid-for, middle-class tax cut. He also said, off the record, that if he were to come out of the closet, it would be on his own terms.
While both of Dole's ads are negative in tone, I have to give him flying colors on his anti-Clinton message. Clinton's ads are too bland; they just state the facts. Dole, on the other hand, loads his ads with gloom and doom prophecies of the future despite the booming economy, the rise in the national median income for the first time since 1989, and the drop in the poverty rate.
So, what does Dole have to fall back on but the secret agenda theme?
His only hope is to connect with Generation X because he can basically write off the support of the elderly and women due to his stance on abortion and his cuts in social security.
Dole must show he's hip with the times. We know he is rooting for the Brookl ... Los Angeles Dodgers in the playoffs, but baseball isn't the sport of the '90s. Dole needs to hook onto the latest fad -- aliens.
Dole is a career politician who knows what it takes to get reelected. So he is taking a lesson from television series' like "X-Files" and "Dark Skies."
Like the characters in these shows, who try to expose the government's confidential data on extra-terrestrials, Dole is trying to expose Clinton's secret agenda: he is a conspirator with aliens, and maybe even an alien himself. After all, no human politician could possibly survive the Whitewater investigation, F.B.I. files conspiracy and Paula Jones. Why do you think Bill Clinton is so hesitant to release his medical records?
Recently, the ads have appeared to work. Dole sliced what once was a 16 point Clinton lead two weeks ago to a nine point lead over the weekend. However, Clinton pollsters maintain that their lead has been a constant 16 points since Memorial Day. Even a simple poll causes the Clinton Administration to quell any uprising.
Unfortunately for Dole, he is caught between the White House and a giant flying saucer. Dole is for sweeping out government waste and making the White House less intrusive to the citizens of the United States.
Clinton, an alien sympathizer if Dole is correct, can not only make the White House less intrusive, but, as in the film "Independence Day," can make the White House disappear altogether with the cutting edge of technology, leaving Dole and his broom -- a symbol that only reinforces the generational difference among the candidates.
America is dissatisfied with the government, so why not blow it up? Clinton and his spaceship are the right ones for the job.
But as the polls are now steady with even a slight shift of support behind Clinton again, Dole's ad seems to have backfired. Voters have always said they believe Dole to be more honest than Clinton, and they are starting to believe Dole's accusation of Clinton's secret agenda which leads into another problem.
If Dole wants to make a weak national defense under Clinton an issue, the debate is moot because he can't compete with Clinton's ultimate fighting machine on this planet that can destroy cities in seconds. I think Iraq just might pay heed to the United Nations and the United States now.
Throughout the campaign, the political pundits have claimed Dole is bereft of ideas. But now, just as he seizes a theme that catches the nation by storm, it explodes into Dole's face. He better just thank God he wasn't in the White House when it did.
