thought he would be attacking the President, and any extra votes he garnered would come from potential Bush supporters rather than those who might go for me. I said I had no objection to Perot’s inclusion, not because I agreed that Perot would hurt Bush more—I wasn’t convinced of that—but because I felt that, in the end, he would have to be included and I didn’t want to look like a chicken. By October 4, both campaigns agreed to invite Perot to participate. In the week leading up to the first debate, I finally endorsed the controversial North American Free Trade Agreement, which the Bush administration had negotiated with Canada and Mexico, with the caveat that I wanted to negotiate side agreements ensuring basic labor and environmental standards that would be binding on Mexico. My labor supporters were worried about the loss of low-wage manufacturing jobs to our southern neighbor and strongly disagreed with my position, but I felt compelled to take it, for both economic and political reasons. I was a free-trader at heart, and I thought America had to support Mexico’s economic growth to ensure long-term stability in our hemisphere. A couple of days later, more than 550 economists, including nine Nobel Prize winners, endorsed my economic program, saying it was more likely than the President’s proposals to restore economic growth. Just as I was determined to focus on economics in the run-up to the debates, the Bush camp was equally determined to keep undermining my character and reputation for honesty. They were facilitating a search request with the National Records Center in Suitland, Maryland, for all the information in my passport files on my forty-day trip to northern Europe, the Soviet Union, and Czechoslovakia back in 1969–70. Apparently, they were chasing down bogus rumors that I had gone to Moscow to pursue antiwar activities or had tried to apply for citizenship in another country to avoid the draft. On October 5, there were news reports that the files had been tampered with. The passport story dragged out all month. Though the FBI said the files had not been tampered with, what had occurred put the Bush campaign in a bad light. A senior State Department political appointee pushed the National Records Center, which had more than 100 million files, to put the search of mine ahead of two thousand other requests that had been filed earlier, and that normally took months to process. A Bush appointee also ordered the U.S. embassies in London and Oslo to conduct an “extremely thorough” search of their files for information on my draft status and citizenship. At some point, it was revealed that even my mother’s passport files were searched. It was hard to imagine that even the most paranoid right-wingers could think that a country girl from Arkansas who loved the races was subversive.
Later, it came out that the Bush people had also asked John Major’s government to look into my activities in England. According to news reports, the Tories complied, although they claimed their “comprehensive” but fruitless search of their immigration and naturalization documents was in response to press inquiries. I know they did some further work on it, because a friend of David Edwards’s told David that British officials had questioned him about what David and I did in those long-ago days. Two Tory campaign strategists came to Washington to advise the Bush campaign on how they might destroy me the way the Conservative Party had undone Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock six months earlier. After the election, the British press fretted that the special relationship between our two countries had been damaged by this unusual British involvement in American politics. I was determined that there would be no damage, but I wanted the Tories to worry about it for a while. The press had a field day with the passport escapade, and Al Gore called it a “McCarthyite abuse of power.” Undeterred, the President kept asking me to explain the trip to Moscow and continued to question my patriotism. In an interview on CNN with Larry King, I said I loved my country and had never considered giving up my American citizenship. I don’t think the public paid much attention to the passport flap one way or the other, and I was kind of amused by the whole thing. Of course it was an abuse of power, but a pathetically small one compared with Iran-Contra. It just showed how desperate the Bush people were to hang on to power, and how little they had to offer for America’s future. If they wanted to spend the last month of the campaign barking up the wrong tree, that was fine with me. In the days leading up to the first debate, I worked hard to be well prepared. I studied the briefing book diligently and participated in several mock-debate sessions. President Bush was played by Washington lawyer Bob Barnett, who had performed the same role four years earlier for Dukakis. Perot’s stand-in was Congressman Mike Synar of Oklahoma, who had Ross’s sayings and accent down pat. Bob and Mike wore me out in tough encounters before each debate. After each of our sessions, I was just glad I didn’t have to debate them; the election might have turned out differently. The first debate was finally held on Sunday, October 11, Hillary’s and my seventeenth wedding anniversary, at Washington University in St. Louis. I went into it encouraged by the endorsements in that morning’s editions of the
Perot got the first question from one of three journalists, who rotated in a process moderated by Jim Lehrer of
All of us did reasonably well. After the debate the press was hustled by each candidate’s “spinners” saying why their man had won. I had three good ones in Mario Cuomo, James Carville, and Senator Bill Bradley. One of President Bush’s boosters, Charlie Black, invited the press to watch a new TV ad attacking me on the draft. The spinners could have some effect on the news stories about the debate, but those who had watched it had already formed their opinions.
I thought that, on balance, I gave the best answers in terms of specifics and arguments, but that Perot did better in presenting himself as folksy and relaxed. When Bush said Perot didn’t have government experience, Perot said the President “had a point. I don’t have any experience in running up a $4 trillion debt.” Perot had big jug ears, which were accentuated by his short crew cut. On the deficit he said, “We’ve got to collect taxes” to eliminate it, but if anyone had a better idea, “I’m all ears.” By contrast, I was a bit tight and at times seemed almost overprepared.
The good news was that the President gained no ground. The bad news was that Perot looked credible again. In the beginning, if he rose in the polls, his support would come from genuinely undecided voters or from those leaning toward both the President and me. But I well knew that if Ross rose much above 10 percent, most of his new voters would be those who wanted change but still weren’t quite comfortable with me. The post-debate polls showed that among those who watched, a significant number now had more confidence in my ability to be President. They also showed that more than 60 percent of those who watched viewed Perot more favorably than they had before the debate. With three weeks to go, he was keeping the race unpredictable.
Two nights later, on October 13, in the vice-presidential debate in Atlanta, Al Gore clearly got the better of Dan Quayle. Perot’s running mate, retired admiral James Stockdale, was likable but a non-factor, and his performance took a little steam out of the momentum Perot had gained after the St. Louis debate. Quayle was effective in staying on message: Clinton wanted to raise taxes and Bush wouldn’t; Clinton had no character and Bush did. He repeated what, in retrospect, was one of my worst public statements. In early 1991, after the Congress authorized President Bush to attack Iraq, I was asked how I would have voted. I was for the resolution, but I answered, “I guess I would have voted with the majority if it was a close vote. But I agree with the arguments the minority made.” At the time, I hadn’t thought I would be running for President in 1992. Both Arkansas senators had voted against authorizing the war. They were my friends, and I just didn’t want to embarrass them publicly.
