A CASE OF MUD LUST

By MARGARET CARLSON

Jay Leno called the vice presidential debate "must sleep tv," and ABC complained it was a C-SPAN sing-along. A majority of the public say "dull" when pollsters ask them to describe the campaign. By the time of the presidential town-hall meeting, it looked as if Game Six of the pennant race would draw more viewers; midway through, Life Among the Manatees on Nova had more.

This growing ennui is making the press more desperate than Bob Dole. About this time in a campaign we journalists are usually worrying about having sunk too low; instead, we fear we've risen so high we're being ignored during our quadrennial chance to show off. For a brief, shining moment we had Dick Morris: since then, nothing. After the second debate, where Jack Kemp, the designated slasher, came off more like Barney than Freddy Krueger, even Ted Koppel gave up. "Here we have one of the most civil debates in history, and we can barely stay awake," he said. Then the press began to chide moderator Jim Lehrer for being too nice. "He drains the energy out of the room,'' declared a reporter in the Washington Post.

Eating your own, now that's desperate. But so is putting the "character issue" squarely back in bounds just to spice up headlines. Last week, by some subtle communication about the new rules of engagement, the members of the press let Dole know they would not call him "mean" or a "hatchet man" if he were finally to get tough. Yet no one seems ready to re-examine private behavior, for example Dole's sudden divorce from his first wife or allegations about Clinton and Gennifer Flowers. In fact, under the current rule of confining scrutiny to "public character," only Clinton's is in play (Craig Livingstone, Whitewater pardons, Indonesian money), not Dole's (Nixon and Iran-contra pardons, Dwayne Andreas' money, former financial adviser David Owen's jail term).

Dole took the bait, using the first question in San Diego, a Can't We All Get Along-type inquiry from a grade school teacher, to bring up the FBI files and Whitewater pardons. This was so promising that an audible sigh of relief went up in the press room. Sadly, however, the panel was made up of those real people we hear so much about, and real people apparently don't take their lead from the media. They were still looking for the beef, and didn't know the new spin was, "Where's the mud?" Like jurors who take their responsibility seriously, they were unwilling to pick up on Dole's three early forays into scandal land, even at the cost of forgoing 30 seconds of sound-bite fame.

Yet character is still important in deciding who should be President; a campaign shouldn't be turned into a Sunday school picnic where money, religion and politics are off limits. But neither the candidates, who have similarly flawed histories, nor the press, which reduces moral subjects to cartoon dimensions, is well positioned to weigh one man's soul against another's. Dole has had a free ride for several weeks. But beware. There's time for several more news cycles and rules changes without notice. Clinton could decide to defend himself so that any victory he has contains an element of redemption, not just victory. And he could go on the offensive. Certainly, stories about Dole's Aqua-Leisure contributions by way of Hong Kong are the moral equivalent of Al Gore's dubious, vegetarian fund raiser at the Buddhist temple. The word gotcha isn't glued to the word journalism for nothing. Freddy Kreuger came back enough times; so could the hatchet man.