Dole Urges Republicans to Show Restraint in Judging Clinton

TARZANA —  Bob Dole, the Republican presidential candidate who lost to Bill Clinton in 1996, on Saturday urged GOP loyalists to show restraint as Congress investigates allegations of perjury endangering the Clinton presidency.

Dole resisted attacking Clinton for alleged improprieties surrounding the president’s affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, saying “everybody makes mistakes in life.” But he told the Republican gathering that the nation should have leaders who exemplify honesty and integrity, and to whom “values are important.”

“This is a sad day in many ways,” said Dole, the keynote speaker at a fund-raiser for GOP congressional hopeful and Thousand Oaks businessman Randy Hoffman. The event, held at the Braemar Country Club, attracted close to 200 Republicans, some of whom brought their old “Dole-Kemp 96” signs from Dole’s presidential campaign.

Dole warned Republican candidates not to revel in the political fallout Democrats may face as a result of Clinton’s problems, and told Hoffman the best way for him to beat Democratic incumbent Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks) for the 24th congressional seat is to run a “very positive campaign.” The 24th district includes most of Thousand Oaks.

“It just seems to me, as Republicans, this is the time for restraint,” Dole said.

Hoffman, former chief executive officer of a high-tech company in San Dimas, said campaigning with Clinton’s possible impeachment hanging over the country will be difficult, since attention of voters will likely be fixed on the Clinton scandal and oblivious to his campaign messages.

“It’s frustrating,” Hoffman said.

Dole, former Republican Senate Majority Leader, vowed not to become Clinton’s chief critic after losing the election, but lamented about how voters in 1996 dismissed his repeated warnings about Clinton’s ethical transgressions.

“I kept saying ‘Where’s the outrage?’ ” Dole told reporters after the event. “There just wasn’t any.”

Dole said it was too soon to predict Clinton’s fate, even after the release of independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s report accusing Clinton of abusing his presidential powers and lying under oath to cover up an affair with Lewinsky.

“It’s a little early to judge, but this is a load. I mean this story has legs of its own,” Dole said, prompting a laugh from the GOP crowd.

Dole, who appeared embarrassed by the laughter, quickly explained that “having legs” is a journalistic term reporters use for a story with many new developments.

Ultimately, the votes of congressional Democrats will carry the most weight and any effort to impeach Clinton will have to be bipartisan to have any credibility with the American people, Dole said.

This was the lesson learned during the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s, when President Nixon decided to resign from office after Capitol Hill Republicans joined the effort to oust him, Dole said.

Watergate also showed how damaging a scandalized president can be to his party, said Dole, who was chairman of the Republican National Party when the scandal first broke. “A lot of Republican voters were disgusted with us,” Dole said, and those voters began staying home on election day.

State Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Northridge), one of the supporters at Hoffman’s $125-a-plate fund-raiser, said he remembers knocking on doors to get Republicans to the polls during the first election after Nixon’s resignation.

“You could have set their house on fire, and they still wouldn’t have come out to vote,” said McClintock, who is unopposed in his reelection bid this November.

A similar soured attitude will probably handicap Democratic candidates during the November election, McClintock said, because there is no way they can escape voter discontent created by the Clinton White House.

“I think the facts are undeniable that he has become a global object of ridicule,” McClintock said. “President Clinton no longer has the respect and moral authority to discharge his duties.”