A good move, perhaps–but not enough to pre-empt scrutiny. Records in the “reading room” and elsewhere show that Clark used extensive contacts in the Bush administration to lobby on behalf of a company eager to get post-9/11 security work. As an Arkansas businessman, Clark had buttonholed Vice President Dick Cheney and, NEWSWEEK learned, Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, aides to FBI Director Robert Mueller and his former chief deputy commander in Europe. The aim: to get a contract for Acxiom, a Little Rock firm whose “data mining” techniques are useful in tracking terrorists. The lobbying–for which Clark was paid about $400,000–must have helped: Acxiom got a contract. Everything was aboveboard and disclosed, Lehane said. But Clark’s eagerness to do a deal was ironic, given his more recent criticism of the Bush administration’s handling of security. And the Dean campaign, furious at weeks of attacks on their own candidate, took the occasion to fire at will. “Clark portrays himself as an outsider when he’s really just another Washington insider,” said Dean spokesman Jay Carson. “It turns out that this guy was a registered lobbyist long before he was a registered Democrat.”
So it goes–and so it will continue to go–in what could be a nasty, brutish and long slog to the Democratic convention next July in Boston. In Washington and at Camp David, George W. Bush was surrounded by calm and confidence as he rehearsed his State of the Union speech, scheduled, as it happens, for the night after the Iowa caucuses. The address was being viewed inside the White House as an advantageously timed political one, a campaign kickoff in which the president would declare that the country is “more secure, more prosperous and more compassionate” under his administration’s leadership.
No such sense of order exists among the Democrats vying to succeed him. Just the opposite: it’s a fistfight in a bath of acid. An extraordinary number of campaigns–six–are making serious plans to fight for the nomination until at least early March, and several may in fact have the financial and organizational wherewithal to do so. Iowa’s caucuses were unlikely to winnow out major figures (though Carol Moseley Braun dropped out and endorsed Dean). A three-way race loomed in New Hampshire, putting Dean, Clark and a revivified John Kerry against each other. John Edwards, who won rave reviews in Iowa, planned to use them in South Carolina on Feb. 3.
How long will the race last? Dean strategists insist it will boil down to a two-man contest by mid-February, with their man vanquishing the last foe in the New York and California primaries on March 2. But advisers to other candidates say they see the possibility of a lengthy, three-way–even four-way–nomination contest. And the party’s election rules could forestall a quick end to the race. It’s a pure “proportional representation” system, in which a candidate is entitled to a share of delegates if he wins at least 15 percent of the vote. “If it’s a three-way race, no one will be able to close it out,” said Kerry adviser Tad Devine.
All of which puts a premium on the quick kill–in attack ads and mailings (including on the Internet) and on timely use of oppo. As front runner, Dean was caught in a cross-fire for months as stories–nudged into the mainstream by Republican and Democratic attack artists alike–surfaced about his personal finances, speeches, stock dealings and more. The Deaniacs fingered Lehane, who acquired a reputation for expertise in such work as a self-proclaimed “Master of Disaster” fending off attacks on President Bill Clinton. Rather than issue a flat denial, Lehane argued that most of the Dean wounds were public and self-inflicted. “He’s the one who said we shouldn’t prejudge the guilt of Osama bin Laden,” Lehane said. “It didn’t take research to find that.” Pursuing the sunshine theme, Clark will release his medical records, NEWSWEEK has learned. The not-so-subtle goal: to force Dean to release the medical records that helped him avoid the draft.
If oppo doesn’t find its way into “free” media, there’s always direct mail, which flies below radar at least until it hits the mailbox. The Kerry team, for example, dropped a late-breaking letter in Iowa attacking Clark as a corporate lobbyist and Dean as too gaffe-prone to be president. Dick Gephardt has attacked Dean as a foe of Medicare and all his rivals as corporate toadies on trade, and Dean has blasted the others for supporting the war in Iraq.
Then there are dirty tricks–or rumors of them. One increasingly prevalent tactic is called “push polling,” in which phone-bank callers, purporting to be neutral samplers of opinion, instead “push” negative attacks on those being interviewed. Dean’s Iowa staff claimed that Kerry’s allies had been caught on videotape making such calls in Cedar Rapids–a claim the Kerry camp denied. And the anonymity of the Internet might be a temptation to take things further, masquerading to make mischief. A few weeks ago, an e-mail appeared from Joe Trippi, Dean’s campaign manager, in which he purportedly advised gay volunteers from out of state not to stay in the homes of Iowa supporters. It was bogus, but it took the campaign weeks of effort to stamp out belief in its authenticity.
The “Trippi” e-mail perhaps is a harbinger of Net-based subterfuge to come. Lurkers and trolls can hide their identity, or have none at all, as they dish “oppo”–or flat lies–with impunity. Such techniques could work, said Lehane, but they are not without risk. “The fact is, e-mail leaves an electronic trail, and you can trace it.” He sounded as if he’d considered the matter–from both sides of the line.
