Taking heart from rambunctious crowds and Ross Perot's attacks on President Clinton, Bob Dole is professing confidence as he lampoons the administration's "animal house" and plots Election Night high jinks.
"I'm willing to wait up all night on Nov. 5 waiting for California to come in for Bob Dole and Jack Kemp," the Republican challenger said Sunday. "And on the way home I want to drive by the White House and honk - I want 'em waking up in there."Returning to issues in his all-out bid to win California, Dole planned to attend a rally Monday outside San Diego's City Hall. There, Republicans hoped to increase support for Proposition 209, the state referendum to end race- and sex-based preferences in public hiring, contracting and education.
On Sunday, Dole said such preferences were "absolutely wrong and violate the principles of our Constitution." With polls finding Dole lagging in California anywhere from 8 to 20 points behind Clinton, the GOP campaign extended its tour here by one day and floated plans for a last-minute blitz of the state next week.
Dole cast it as a block-Clinton strategy: "This is the state - if he can't win California, he's going back to Little Rock."
Dole was aggressively courting Californians with his staunch opposition to affirmative action and illegal immigration - two matters he called "wedge issues." But a Los Angeles Times poll last week cast doubt on that tack, finding a slim majority - 54 percent - in favor of Proposition 209, and only 7 percent who considered illegal immigration a major influence in their presidential pick.
Rallying a receptive crowd at the annual Steak and Oyster Feed outside Sacramento on Sunday, Dole lambasted the Clinton team, saying: "It's the animal house. It's no longer the White House. The American people ought to be fed up to their eyeballs with this outfit."
He went on to offer himself as the "mature" alternative and suggested that a second Clinton term would be cut short by an ethics blow-up.
"I can't believe any thinking American - except the real partisans - want four more years of this," Dole said.
"Ross Perot suggests, indirectly, it may not be four more years. Maybe it's going to be so serious next year, somebody might be in real trouble. I didn't say that, Ross Perot did - but I thought about it," Dole said.
On NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday, Perot sharply criticized what he called the administration's ethical lapses, saying they could turn into "Watergate II" and divert attention from running the nation.
He also said the voters should never elect someone as president "who does not have a strong moral-ethical base" because that person would be in charge of the military.
If voters were limited to Clinton and Dole as their choices for commander-in-chief, Perot said, Dole "paid a terrible price" with his World War II combat wounds and "I think every American would pick him because he understands what he's doing. The other candidate has no experience in military or in combat."
Casting Perot's remarks in the best light, Dole told reporters, "I think he's being very positive in telling the American people they have a choice and I'm the better choice."