Perot is climbing in the polls, threatening to make a three-way race out of what had been viewed–even by many of Bush’s top advisers-as a Clinton waltz to the White House. It’s not clear how much higher Perot can go, or whether he can help derail Clinton’s plodding march toward an Electoral College victory. But Perot is poised to send a stern message to politics as we know it: shape up, or else. “He’s running as the national Roto-Rooter Man,” said GOP analyst Kevin Phillips.
Buoyed by his debate performances and ubiquitous infomercials, Perot already has scrambled the campaign’s endgame. Unlike other recent third-force candidates, he’s gaining at the end. He’s inching close enough to the pack to argue that supporting him is no longer a “wasted vote.” His theme of deficit doom is cutting-and convincing. He’s running an imperious, TV-based operation that spits in the face of parties and the press. Voters, lukewarm to Bush and Clinton, are unwilling to accept the edict that the race ended before votes were cast. “He’s riding a bullet,” says Democratic polltaker Harrison Hickman. “We just don’t know where.”
At Clinton headquarters in Little Rock, it isn’t panic city yet-but the suburbs are in view. “We’re gonna lose this thing if we’re not careful!” cautioned strategist James Carville, rallying the troops. Observers judged him to be more than half serious. In Bush’s Washington bunker, the funereal gloom lifted a tad with Perot’s rise. Now the faithful, perhaps quixotically, are daring to hope that Perot can help them eke out a plurality win by siphoning votes from the Democrat. “The higher Perot goes,” declared political director Mary Matalin, “the more it comes out of Clinton.”
NEWSWEEK’S new poll shows that Perot weakens both his rivals. He’s stolen all he can from Bush’s Republican base; the president attracts a pathetic 30 percent of the likely vote-virtually unchanged from two weeks ago. But in a year when voters yearn for change, Clinton’s carefully hedged version isn’t enough to attract all who want Bush ousted. So now Perot is gnawing at Clinton’s support, which last week dropped from 46 to 42 percent. Perot’s rose sharply, from 14 to 22 percent. Other new polls show the Clinton-Bush matchup even closer. “He’s increased the burden we have of showing that Clinton is the candidate of change,” concedes Clinton polltaker Stan Greenberg.
Even so, the Electoral College map remains a source of some comfort in Little Rock. Clinton is ahead by wide margins in the “megastates” of California, New York and Illinois. He leads by lesser amounts in other large states, and can count on most of the small states the Democrats carried in 1988. But a new poll in Texas shows Perot dragging Clinton down into a dead heat with Bush; other polls show Perot helps Bush draw closer to Clinton in Ohio, Wisconsin and New Jersey.
Clinton’s lower altitude isn’t due solely to Perot’s rise. The president, beginning with the final debate, in East Lansing, Mich., belatedly managed to hone his “T and T” attack-vividly portraying Clinton as a flip-flopping tax raiser who can’t be trusted. “Watch out, Middle America,” a feisty and enthusiastic Bush warned as his campaign train whistle-stopped through Georgia and the Carolinas. Clinton is “going to stick it right in your wallet.” At one stop, Bush all but called Clinton a liar. Some of the mud stuck. The NEWSWEEK Poll shows a sharp drop in the ratio of voters who think Clinton has “the honesty and integrity to serve as president.”
But Team Bush shouldn’t congratulate itself. Any reassessment of Clinton may serve only to drive more voters to Perot-leaving Bush in third place, where no sitting president has finished since William Howard Taft in 1912. The debates, which drew audiences hovering near an astonishing 90 million, didn’t launch Bush-they launched Perot. Now he’s airing urgent, effective ads on the deficit and the economy, as well as a series of self-congratulatory half-hours in prime time. While foes cried foul (“He’s getting a total free ride,” complained one top Clinton aide), the NEWSWEEK Poll showed that his spots were seen as less negative, and more persuasive, than those of his rivals.
Emboldened, Perot planned to hit the road, too. He was scheduled to stage rallies in Pittsburgh and western New Jersey-locations shrewdly selected to beam him into three swing states. But Perot is still Perot: dictatorial, unwilling to brook criticism, snarling at the press. He talks only to a small circle of advisers-and only to bark orders.
But neither Bush nor Clinton is likely to say anything particularly nasty about Perot. They need his votes. “And why tangle with a guy who has more money than God?” asks polltaker Hickman. Bush took one shot, saying Perot had some “nutty ideas,” but his aides then backed him off. Clinton is touting himself more forcefully as a man of “real change,” but doesn’t mention Perot-and probably won’t. “We’re watching and waiting,” said Clinton communications director George Stephanopoulos.
Bush’s main target still is Clinton. The strategy is to focus on only one “T”-trust. The Bush campaign has begun airing an ad with footage of recent international crises, and demands to know whom viewers would trust to handle similar events in the future. White House aides even rolled out the “womanizing” issue. One aide read from transcripts of Gennifer Flowers’s allegedly undoctored conversations with Clinton.
Clinton is clinging to caution. He touts his mile-long list of bipartisan endorsements (“10 Nobel Prize winners, 24 retired generals and admirals”), and keeps the focus squarely on the economic shortcomings of the Reagan-Bush years. “How’re you doin’?” he asks everywhere on the trail-as though the answer would automatically be “worse,” and the only answer a vote for him.
With Clinton still the likely victor, the real questions concerned the longer-term import of Perot’s revival. His rise shows that a candidate with a snappy message-and tons of money-can use TV to erase the gravest of doubts about his bona fides. Ominously for both parties, he was doing especially well among young voters–a sign of their impatience with politics. A strong Perot vote would be a humiliation to the GOP, undermining its role as an effective opposition party, says analyst Phillips.
Clinton might not be in much better shape. He could register the lowest winner’s percentage of the popular vote since 1968, when Richard Nixon won a three-way race against Wallace and Hubert Humphrey. And if he does make it to the White House, Clinton will have to contend with Perot: a sanctified, one-man Greek chorus on the evil of deficits. In that sense Perot has already won-even before the votes are cast.
NEWSWEEK POLL If the election were held today, whom would you vote for? CURRENT 30% Bush 42% Clinton 22% Perot OCT. 16,1992 31% Bush 46% Clinton 14% Perot NEWSWEEK Poll, Oct. 22-23,1992
NEWSWEEK POLL If Clinton is elected, should he: 21% Consult with Perot on economic matters 10% Appoint Perot to a high position in his administration 27% Do both 34% Neither For this NEWSWEEK Poll, The Gallup Organization telephoned 755 registered voters Oct. 22-23. Margin of error +/- 4 percentage points. “Don’t know” and other response, not shown. The NEWSWEEK Poll copyright 1992 by NEWSWEEK, Inc.
NEWSWEEK POLL Which best describes your attitude toward Perot’s candidacy (asked of non-Perot voters)? 8% I like Perot’s ideas, would vote for him if he were running even in the polls with the front runner 4%..running within 5 points 4%..running within 10 points 2%..running within 20 points 41%..Like his ideas but wouldn’t vote for him 28%..Not impressed with Perot’s ideas and wouldn’t vote for him NEWSWEEK Poll, Oct, 22-23, 1992
title: “Running Scared” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-20” author: “Julianne Nelson”
Was Rwanda’s long ordeal really ending? In Gisenyi province, local residents lined the streets to welcome refugees home. Some of them even applauded. And these were Tutsis clapping for Hutus. That alone was a hopeful sign for Rwandan refugees who originally fled over the border to escape retribution for the massacre of nearly a million Tutsis in 1994. After two years in miserable refugee camps in Zaire, hundreds of thousands of people were heading home.
New fighting has broken the bonds that held these refugees in exile. Zairean rebels supported by Rwanda recently have moved against the refugee camps in Zaire to put an end to cross-border raids by remnants of the defeated Hutu army. The Hutu soldiers lost control of some of the larger camps, which have been sustained by Western food aid. And once gunmen no longer threatened those who tried to leave, many decided to test the claims by Hutu militias that they’d be abused by the new Rwandan regime. ““It was all lies,’’ said Hutu refugee Alexis Bazirusha. ““The Hutu soldiers said if we return to Rwanda, [the Tutsis] will kill us.’’ He stared ahead at the river of refugees flowing homeward. ““I’m not afraid of going back to Rwanda.''
Not long after the refugees began their homeward trek, President Bill Clinton told a news conference that U.S. troops would head for central Africa on a mission that was already outdated. As many as 5,000 soldiers were to join a multinational force, led by Canadians, to feed the refugees and help them home to Rwanda. ““The world’s most powerful nation must not turn its back on so many desperate people and so many innocent children,’’ Clinton said. In virtually the same breath, the president also announced that he was extending the one-year deadline for U.S. troops in Bosnia; a smaller contingent will probably stay there to monitor the ceasefire until June 1998. Republicans in Congress are unlikely to block Clinton’s plans in Bosnia or Africa, but they will surely criticize them. ““I remain deeply concerned about the increasing use of troops for “policing’ operations throughout the world,’’ said Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond.
By the weekend, everything about the American mission in Zaire was up in the air–its size, its mission, its length of stay, even whether it should go at all. ““If this trend continues… it will not eliminate the need for [the mission], but it will change it,’’ Defense Secretary William Perry said. Some refugees said that news of the multinational force had triggered their decision to go home. But the Rwandan government, now closely allied to Washington, said it no longer supported an American military intervention. It wants Western countries to spend those resources on resettling the refugees in Rwanda instead. Some international aid workers, meanwhile, argued strenuously that the force should come ahead. ““Over 500,000 refugees are not on the move,’’ said Michele Quintaglie, a spokesperson for the World Food Program. ““We hope [the fact that some refugees are returning] will encourage them to come back [to Rwanda], too. But this should not be an excuse for the world to turn its back on the refugees who remain.''
Actually, the world has been trying quietly to turn its back ever since the genocide in Rwanda erupted in 1994. The horrifying tales of mass murder, committed by neighbor against neighbor with machete and club, provoked a global outcry and led to the establishment of an international war-crimes tribunal to punish the culprits. But the tribunal has accomplished almost nothing. The Tutsi-led government of Rwanda has locked up more than 85,000 Hutus who, it claims, participated in the genocide. The accused languish in overcrowded prisons, with little hope of receiving a fair trial. Meanwhile, the neighboring country of Burundi is siz- zling with Hutu-Tutsi hatreds of its own. (That, indeed, was where White House aides had expected the next crisis in central Africa to erupt.) And although the civil war in Zaire has herded the refu- gees home, it also threatens the frail Zairean government and could destabilize the region even further.
When the rebels smashed into Goma early this month, they discovered that retreating Zairean soldiers had left them little to loot. Broken bottles, trampled business files and scraps of worthless currency bearing the visage of Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko littered the streets. ““They took my radio, television, two bicycles and my wife’s best clothes,’’ said Shamba Balthazar, 33, who worked for the YMCA before all the foreign aid workers left town. The rebels didn’t seem interested in looting. Dressed in street clothes, flip-flop sandals and a hodgepodge of uniforms taken from defeated soldiers, they sipped beer and talked of taking over the whole country.
But the victors can be brutal, too. That was obvious in Mugunga, once the world’s largest refugee camp with half a million inhabitants. Twelve corpses, all men of fighting age, lay piled together next to the lava-rock wall of a community latrine. Each had been executed with a bullet to the back of the head. A 12th body, evidently a man who tried to run, lay a few yards away. Most of the Hutu refugees interviewed by NEWSWEEK said the rebels were responsible. A few claimed it was a last brutal act by the Hutu militiamen who fled as the rebels advanced. But all of them were inured to the horror. As they packed up to go home, they scarcely glanced at the bodies. A pile of 26 bodies, mostly women and children hacked to death with machetes, lay nearby. Those who killed them still roam the countryside. In spite of the joyous homecomings in Rwanda, central Africa clearly hasn’t seen the last of its ordeal.
