His bus tour snaking through central California's GOP districts Saturday, a feisty Bob Dole likened this year's presidential stakes to World War II and led thousands in taunting President Clinton: "It's time to go! It's time to go!"
The Republican launched his go-for-broke drive for California's 54 electoral votes by hitting the state's hot-button issues of illegal immigration and affirmative action. And he appeared undaunted by state-wide polls that put Clinton as many as 20 points ahead."I smell victory in California," Dole called to a sunny rally of thousands in Visalia, even as he acknowledged his uphill climb.
"Nothing has ever come to me except the hard way," Dole said.
He tweaked the president on everything from his expensive 1993 runway haircut to his lack of military service and the misappropriation of FBI files by the White House security office. One crowd he worked into a brief chant of "It's time to go!"
Late in the day, Dole urged the president to "confess" on television his administration's mistakes. "You ought to ask for mercy," Dole beckoned to Clinton from Merced, Calif.
As his 10-bus "Rally the Valley" motorcade rolled north along route 99, Dole stopped in Selma and pledged to end both affirmative action and health care for illegal immigrants.
"You come to America with AIDS, you're entitled to medical treatment. This is going to stop. Legal immigration is one thing - illegal immigration is entirely something else," Dole said.
In response, White House adviser Rahm Emanuel said HIV treat-ment for illegal aliens began as a public-health imperative under the 1990 Ryan White Care Act, which Dole voted for in the Senate. "Bob Dole should have a rendezvous with his record," Emanuel said.
While Dole's home-stretch campaign has focused on administration controversies, Saturday was the first time in months that he referred to Hillary Rodham Clinton's Whitewater-related papers. They were removed from the office of deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster after his suicide and taken to the White House family residence by an aide to Hillary Clinton. Police investigating Foster's death were not told of the papers' existence.
"How much of this has gone on, how long has it gone on? Why did these records show up in the living quarters that nobody can find? They don't know how they got there, they've been missing two years," Dole said. "Outrage after outrage after outrage."