VIEWER DEBATE PREP

Why history suggests that Bill Clinton should not be overconfident

Sitting Presidents, beware! Only four incumbents have ever engaged in campaign debates--and three of them have lost.

1976: Gerald Ford, the first ever incumbent President to debate his opponent, meets challenger Jimmy Carter

Ford loses in November

1980: Incumbent Jimmy Carter debates challenger Ronald Reagan, who upbraids the President with "There you go again."

Carter loses in November

1984: Incumbent Ronald Reagan debates challenger Walter Mondale

Reagan wins!

1992: Incumbent George Bush debates challenger Bill Clinton

Bush loses in November

ME, TOO. ME, TOO. ME, TOO

Bob Dole is so bent on exposing what he calls Clinton's "Me, too" practice of snatching his ideas that his campaign has been releasing a "Commander in Thief Watch." (It asks, "If you have no ideas of your own, why not steal someone else's?") But it seems that the plainspoken Kansan is not above a little political plagiarism himself:

--Last month the owners of the 1967 Motown hit Soul Man ordered the Dole campaign to stop playing its "I'm a Dole Man" version of the song at campaign rallies, citing a violation of copyright law "tantamount to theft."

--Dole borrowed Nike's "Just Do It" slogan in crafting his "Just Don't Do It" antidrug catchphrase. Nike just didn't get it. "We are a sports and fitness company," responded a company spokesman. "We're a bit uncomfortable about being brought into the political arena."

--Speaking at Villanova, Dole said Clinton "talks like Dirty Harry but acts like Barney Fife." As the Democrats were quick to point out, Georgia Governor Zell Miller used that exact analogy in speaking of President Bush at the 1992 Democratic Convention.

--This week Dole will hit the road--by bus--touring New Jersey in the mode of transport that was a signature of the Clinton campaign in 1992. "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," notes White House adviser George Stephanopoulos.