And Now, 'The Spiro Strategy'

摘要

How appropriate: spiro t. agnew is back. At a Capitol ceremony last week, he watched the unveiling of his marble bust. No one from the Clinton White House showed up. They didn't need to. They had already found a way to honor Richard Nixon's former vice president: by adopting the nasty, divisive re-election strategy Agnew and his boss perfected. It worked for Nixon-Agnew in 1972. Will it work for Clinton-Gore in 1996? With no balanced-budget plan of his own, and a legislative agenda consisting mostly of veto threats and an antiterrorism bill, Bill Clinton's early re-election game plan is now, as Nixon used to say, "perfectly clear." Aide George Stephanopoulos blandly calls it "definitional work ... cultivating the ground, getting the field ready." But this isn't sowing seeds; it's laying mines. And the goals are reminiscent of Nixon-Agnew a generation ago: demonize foes, link them to "extremists," attack with piranha-sharp sound bites, portray your administration as the last citadel of law, order and the American Way.