Recent commentary from National Journal: Social Studies: Don't Pardon Ex-President Clinton -- Commute His Sentence, by Jonathan Rauch (September 13, 2000) An ex-President jailed? The spectacle would be wrenching, the symbolism right out of some banana republic. Legal Affairs: Boy Scouts Vs. Gays -- The System Is Working Just Fine, by Stuart Taylor (September 13, 2000) A thousand points of pressure are being applied to the Scouts to yield to the emerging social consensus. Media: Reality Politics, Anyone?, by William Powers (September 13, 2000) Perhaps the presidential campaigns could take some cues from CBS' new reality-TV series. The Campaign: A Sitting President Cannot Disappear, Nor Should He, by Carl M. Cannon (September 13, 2000) Thank goodness Bill Clinton rode to the rescue and helped set the tone for the campaign. Legal Affairs: Gore-Lieberman -- Racial Preferences Forever?, by Stuart Taylor Jr. (September 6, 2000) Is there anything left of the senator who used to say that the system of group preferences has to end? Political Pulse: A Referendum on Government's Role, by William Schneider (September 6, 2000) In 1988, Dukakis said the election was about competence, not ideology. This year, Gore is doing the opposite. More from National Journal. Discuss this article in the Politics & Society conference of Post & Riposte.

Political Pulse: Clinton -- Just Doing His Job President Clinton is sending a message: this campaign is not about me by William Schneider September 13, 2000 A 10-point lead for Al Gore in the Newsweek poll? Suddenly the presidential race has been transformed. What happened? As usual, Bill Clinton is at the bottom of this. It's not that voters changed their view of President Clinton. They didn't, at least not much. Clinton's job rating and his personal favorability rating both went up a few points after the Democratic National Convention, according to the Gallup Poll. But what was true before the conventions remains true now: Voters give Clinton high marks for his job performance, but they have a much lower personal opinion of the President. So what changed for Gore? The swing voters in this election are those who approve of the job Clinton is doing but have a negative personal opinion of him. Normally, people who approve of the President's performance vote for his party. But that's not what was happening in early August. Voters who thought Clinton was doing a good job but didn't like him personally were going for Bush by a huge margin-40 points. Where are they now? They're split. Bush's margin among these swing voters shrank after the convention to just 2 points. But although these voters are not yet voting for Gore, their displeasure with Clinton isn't exacting the penalty on Gore it did a month ago. "I stand here tonight as my own man," Gore told the country in Los Angeles. More and more voters are seeing him that way. Sensing the shift, the Republican Party started running the first attack ad of the campaign before Labor Day, in spite of Bush's promise to "change the tone" of politics. Bush defended the ad by calling it "tongue-in-cheek." Yes, but it's also venom-in-tongue. The day the ad was released, Bush said, "I think you can win a campaign without personally attacking an opponent." It sounds pretty personal to scoff at Al Gore for "reinventing himself again" and "claiming credit for things he didn't even do." By allowing the ad to run, Bush risks being called a hypocrite. His problem is that Gore is most vulnerable not on issues but on character and trustworthiness. When Gore separated himself from President Clinton, his personal liabilities diminished. The GOP has to do something to get Gore's negatives back up again. Meanwhile, Clinton is doing what he can to help Gore. Remember back in 1992, when President Bush went racing around the world trying to shore up his international reputation? His critics made fun of him, calling the activity his "Anywhere but America" tour. Now President Clinton is doing the same thing, but nobody's making fun of him. No matter how much Gore tries to be his "own man," President Clinton will be highly relevant to this campaign. The question is, will it be Clinton the President or Clinton the man? If the issue is Clinton the President, Gore's likely to win. If it's Clinton the man, so long, Al. The President knows this. So Clinton the man is staying out of the way. Clinton the President is doing his job. Two weeks ago, President Clinton was in Nigeria, calling on Africans to deal openly and honestly with the AIDS crisis. A day later, the President was in Tanzania, endorsing Nelson Mandela's effort to negotiate a settlement to the vicious ethnic conflict in Burundi. From there he went to Egypt, where he tried to enlist Arab support for a Middle East peace deal. The President then flew to Colombia, half a world away, where he encouraged that country to fight drug production and curtail civil strife. Finally, he came back to Washington, just before Labor Day weekend. To campaign? Not exactly. To reassure Americans he was still on the job, by making such announcements as "there are already 30,000 federal, state, and local personnel engaged in the effort to fight our wildfires, including full military battalions." The President proceeded to veto a Republican bill that would have eliminated estate taxes, and he used the occasion as an opportunity to remind voters of what's at stake in this election. "This bill is wrong," Clinton said. "It is wrong on grounds of fairness. It is wrong on grounds of fiscal responsibility. It shows a sense of priorities that I believe got us in trouble in the first place in the 1980s. If we go back to those priorities, it will get us in trouble again." The next day, the President put off a decision to develop a limited missile defense system. Had Clinton gone ahead with the project, legal experts in the State Department say, it would have amounted to a de facto abrogation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. It would also have been a de facto endorsement of the argument Bush made in his acceptance speech in Philadelphia. "Now is the time not to defend outdated treaties, but to defend the American people," Bush said. How convenient it would have been for Bush to be able to say, "Even President Clinton believes the ABM Treaty is outdated." By his words and actions, President Clinton is sending a message: This campaign is not about me. I'm not even around much any more. This is about my record. Keep the spotlight on the record, not the man. Woody Allen once said, "Eighty percent of life is showing up." That's not true for President Clinton in this campaign. Eighty percent of what he can do for Al Gore is not sticking around. What do you think? Discuss this article in the Politics & Society conference of Post & Riposte. More from National Journal. More on politics and society in Atlantic Unbound and The Atlantic Monthly. William Schneider is the Cable News Network's senior political analyst. He is also a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., and a contributing editor for the Los Angeles Times, National Journal, and The Atlantic Monthly. His column appears every week in National Journal, a weekly magazine covering politics and government published in Washington, D.C. For information on National Journal Group publications, see NationalJournal.com. All material copyright © 2000 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.