The Choice: How Clinton Won - Bob Woodward

Inside the formative months of the 1996 Presidential Campaign, the foremost Washington insider contrasts the machinations of Bob Dole's quest for the presidency with Clinton's concern of how to make his own case to the American electorate. In Woodward's recounting President Clinton had all-but assured victory before the general election began. By June the Clinton-Gore apparatus was well on its way to raising a record $180 million while Dole's campaign would battle with message and fundraising issues throughout. For Woodward this was a campaign more about communication and funding than anything else. Thus it is little surprise that Dole, the consummate senator and nuanced equivocator, could scarcely compete with Bill Clinton, the master communicator.

While few men in American public life may have been more qualified to be President than Robert J. Dole, Woodward's appraisal of Dole's character forces the question of what is required of a President besides experience? Throughout the campaign cycle Dole is frequently unable to master his organization and unable to make executive-style decisions concerning policy, message and strategy. Dole seems to be the archetype of go-along/get-along senate collegiality. In contrast, Clinton, while it is lamented that he often over-analyzes all points, has the bearing of an executive and the willingness to make decisions and soldier forward. Surely some of this difference of tenor cannot be separated  from the aura surrounding the presidency - one wonders how the two would be cast differently were Dole the incumbent and Clinton the challenger - but we are certainly left with the impression that the illusory quality of leadership inheres more in Clinton than Dole. Inasmuch as the presidency may require a sort of American father figure Clinton seems to relish this role, while Dole shrinks from it.

Though it may be apocryphal, Averell Harriman was remarked to have said that men seeking the Presidency must desire, above all else, to be President. Whether or not this is true, and whether or not it reflects well on American politics is open to debate. What is clear is that in the 1996 Presidential Election Bill Clinton desired more than anything else to retain the presidency. That Bob Dole could not give a satisfactory reason for why America should alter course appears inseparable from the portrait Woodward paints of Dole as a decent man. Perhaps he simply was not willing to sacrifice enough to be President; Woodward leaves us unsure as to whether or not this ought redound to his credit.