Perot, Buchanan and Dole - 29 March 1996

There's a problem, a puzzle I've never solved to my satisfaction. Through all the years from time to time, letters come in saying we don't hear enough about the political issues in America and after all, so many of us ultimately depend on the policies of the only superpower. This sort of reprimand – Cooke fiddles while America burns – is infrequent, but it arrives often enough to keep the finger pointed in my direction.

It induces a little wash of guilt which is then, by the next post, washed away by letters complaining I talk too much about American politics and its principle characters, who are, at best abroad, shadowy or lumpish figures. This complaint is most impressive when it's most colourfully made and whenever I get deep into presidential politics.

For instance, I can never forget the Englishman who wrote me a postcard years ago. Now, I imagine him still as a marvellous character, come alive from the works of P.G. Wodehouse: on the surface he's an ass, below the surface there's a strong vein of commonsense. The postcard I still recall said simply: "Please don't go on so about American politics, one's own politics are all one can handle but you're asking us to understand the system like an alternative form of chess in which the pawns move backwards, the bishop are not allowed to move at all and there's no King or Queen."

It's obviously necessary when you can't pick your audience to try to satisfy both schools.

But in a presidential election year, there is I think an obligation from time to time to keep people posted, at least on the racing form of the nags who are entered, so for the moment, and as crisply as I can before we return to a spot of fiddling, there's an interesting, to Americans a fascinating, new line up that we've never expected even a week ago. Until then, everybody knew that President Clinton was always on the hop around the country campaigning like mad and running up an enviable, to any other candidate, an enviable 55 per cent approval of the way he handles the presidency.

This 55 per cent is something remarkable, especially if you consider the landmines that he circumvented, that would have exploded the presidency of most of his predecessors: substantial charges of marital infidelity when he was Governor of Arkansas, his involvement, more exactly his wife's deep involvement in the real estate land development banking Whitewater scandal, which will not go away and for which three participants have already gone to jail.

And, by the way, the failure of that interminably elaborate national healthcare plan of Mrs Clinton's has faded quite a way. She goes soldiering on, spending all her days out in the open, visiting day care centres and children's hospitals, going to depressed places, turning up this week in Bosnia and quite justifiably looking more and more like the spiritual child of Ellen Roosevelt.

So there he is Bill Clinton, at the moment the favourite. And now we have posted, on his right, and certain to be, we thought, his only rival in this two horse race, we have Senator Bob Dole of Kansas. Small town Kansas he keeps reminding us, a Currier and Ives' print of rural America at it's finest, where he was born 72 years ago. It's never mentioned by him or his team that Russell Kansas would have gone from the map ages ago if it had not been sustained most of his life by farm subsidies and other federal handouts.

Senator Dole with the small chiselled features, the wicked humour, which he's now decided need not be suppressed, Senator Dole had a truly emotional moment at home this week. He went there he said to pay off a debt of gratitude to the good folks, the old friends and this was not for once a bit of a sentimental campaign rhetoric. Senator Dole stood there pawing the air with his only good arm, the shattered right arm limp at his side, tears welling up and barely dammed when he thanked the people for what they'd done for him after he came back from the wars a badly wounded soldier, their liberal subscriptions to a fund that paid his expenses for his three year hospital stay.

I dwell briefly on the picture of the humble war hero because after years and years of saying nothing about it, Senator Dole has lately brought it up everywhere. I think this must have been a desperate decision right after the first of the important primaries, New Hampshire, where the conventional myth says, if you lose in New Hampshire you'll never be president. Well some of you will remember Senator Dole lost there to the amazement of everybody except those obstreperous far right conservatives whose votes produced the astonishing victory of the battling Pat Buchanan.

That loss may have been a godsend to Senator Dole because even Mr Dole conceded later whatever Buchanan may have been and is, with his free wheeling bigotry, his Mexican mocking, his anti Semitism, his not very coded racism. What he did was strike a nerve that no other candidate had touched on, namely the rising national anxiety over the corporate habit of downsizing, of abolishing the sheet anchor of everybody whoever worked a steady job. "Huh," said Mr Dole shortly after New Hampshire. "I didn't think jobs would be an issue." A let-them-eat-cake remark that horrified even Senator Dole's campaign managers. Ever since, the senator has expressed on all occasions, deep and compassionate concern for everybody who's been laid off.

Well now, why did I say that a week ago, we knew that the racing card was complete, that it was going to be a two man race. We knew it after that rush of primaries in the South and West and Middle West even before last Tuesday's Californian primary. Senator Dole had well over 900 pledged delegates, he needs 996 for the winning total, so one thing is as certain as President Clinton's being the democratic nominee, Senator Dole will be crowned in San Diego in the summer. That as I say was a week ago. Suddenly there are not two candidates running for president, but quite likely five.

Remember Ross Perot the little bantam cock squawky Texan with two gifts that can help greatly to sustain a political candidacy, a gift of racy colourful speech and the possession of billions of dollars? Well he didn't vanish and you can't honestly say he failed. He didn't win the presidency in 1992 but he successfully robbed George Bush of it by taking, it's admitted, mainly from Bush, by taking 19 per cent of the total vote. Well his movement, his third party has waxed and waned since '92, but renamed the Reform Party it's waxing again and is getting on the ballot in many states not least California the most popular state and one which even the White House says, Mr Clinton has to win in November to win the election.

Who is to lead the Reform Party? They've been looking all over and coming back beseechingly to Mr Perot himself. No never again he said and then having said he’d ne’er consent, consented.

And then there's Mr Pat Buchanan who seemed to most of the Republican primary voters too extreme, too frightening. He's won nothing since New Hampshire and like two other candidates who appeared to have drowned in Senator Dole's floods of votes they sank without trace. But Mr Buchanan won't sink. He thrashes the otherwise smooth waters of the Republican establishment, he swears he's going to take his message to San Diego. And at last check, he threatened, if the Republicans don't join him positively on constitutional banning abortion, abandoning trade treaties and stopping immigration, threatens to run as an independent Republican.

Well this is surely fine news for President Clinton. It's figured that all Mr Buchanan and Mr Ross Perot could successively do would be to take away the votes of people who would otherwise vote for Senator Dole, but now there appears a new man, a passionate environmentalist and consumer hero. Who should pop out of the woodwork, or should I say the greenery, but Ralph Nader. An uncomfortable pause there because I wonder if I've ever talked about him much before, which is rather like being a sports reporter who only once mentioned Andre Agassi.

Ralph Nader is 62 and if there is a more consistent figure in American politics I don't know him. The general populous owes him more than they know. Shortly after Rachel Carson's silent spring, the book that fired every man's and woman's concern about the chemical pollution of nature. Ralph Nader left no environmental issue unbruised by his brainy attacks. He pioneered everything from motorcar seatbelts and the abolition of the side vent window, to the more rigorous testing of foods and drugs, and punishment for industries that befoul our rivers and made lakes the size of Wales un-fishable.

He's been a thorn in the side of every Congress and every Republican president for 30 years. He finds the new Congress particularly obnoxious, especially for its intended suspension of many laws that have effectively cleaned up the waters of this well watered continent. He has a party, naturally the Green Party and he has announced he's going to get on the ballot in a few states most disturbingly for Clinton. He has made it in California.

Mr Nader made his decision because he sees Mr Clinton embracing more and more of the Republicans views, turning into you might say a Republican for Clinton. Mr Nader is disgusted. Any votes he gets would no question rob President Clinton, so while Senator Dole has to worry about defectors turning to Buchanan and Perot, Mr Clinton can now worry about a tiny thief in the night, who after a very close race on a Tuesday in November, could see Mr Clinton wake up in the morning and find the presidency gone.

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