Presidential Candidates

Politicians frequently have someone or something embarrassing in the past that haunts their careers. For Bill Clinton, that person is his eccentric former investment partner James B. McDougal, whose past misdeeds spawned the Whitewater inquiry. For Republican presidential challenger Bob Dole, it is a local businessman and ex-politician named David C. Owen. While Owen's name is by no means as well known as that of McDougal, the two men's stories have notable parallels.

"It's a lovely party," religious right activist Beverly LaHaye told hundreds of cheering antiabortion Republicans gathered in a makeshift tent structure at Sea World this week. "I only wish one thing: that this could be held on the floor of the Republican National Convention." Moments later, Gary Bauer, another religious right standard-bearer, predicted that LaHaye's wish will come true four years from now, at the next GOP convention.

Seeking to strengthen their hold over the nation's political center, Democrats opened their national convention Monday with emotional appeals from former Ronald Reagan aide James S. Brady and wheelchair-bound actor Christopher Reeve that cast President Clinton as a leader who reaches across party lines to help ordinary Americans.

Tonight's program for the Democratic National Convention pulls back the curtain on a cornerstone of President Clinton's strategy to win reelection this fall. From the keynote speech by Indiana Gov.

Early in the first night of the Democratic National Convention, Vice President Al Gore strode into the hall and set off a roar of applause and chants of, "Four more and then Gore!" Although Gore denies even thinking about his own presidential run in 2000, it's clearly on the minds of many of the delegates here.

After dropping in on Chicago to lob rhetorical grenades at President Clinton and the conventioneering Democrats, Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole retreated to this balmy resort town for a bit of sunbathing and relaxation. But the campaign's attack on Clinton's anti-drug-war record continued with a new television ad that draws from one of history's most controversial political advertisements.

After stumbling battered and penniless through the spring and early summer, Bob Dole enters August ready to make a serious run at the presidency. Or so says his campaign brain trust. Acknowledging that the campaign up to now has lacked focus and at times has verged on the incoherent, top Dole aides now say that they have in place a blueprint to carry the former senator within striking distance of President Clinton, who now holds a double-digit lead in all national surveys.

Former California Rep. Ed Zschau, a moderate Republican and high-tech entrepreneur, is Reform Party presidential candidate Richard D. Lamm's choice for a running mate. In a telephone interview from his home here Friday, Lamm would not elaborate on the reasons behind his selection in advance of a formal announcement Monday. Lamm is running for the Reform Party nomination against party founder and funder Ross Perot. Perot has not chosen a running mate.

These two ads, both of which have been airing in roughly 15 key states, including parts of California, neatly encapsulate major themes of the Dole and Clinton campaigns. The Dole ad: The emphasis is on taxes and the economy. The aim is to capitalize on public unease about the economy which continues despite the low rates of unemployment and inflation White House officials tout. Dole says his proposed 15% cut in tax rates would spur a higher rate of economic growth.

There they go again. The arguments between America's baby boomers and their parents that rang across kitchen tables through the 1960s and 1970s have unexpectedly resurfaced in the presidential race between President Clinton, the first baby boomer in the Oval Office, and Bob Dole, a man old enough to be the president's father.