CLINTON IS ATTACK DOG FOR DEMS

With only a half year left in his reign, his legacy starving for some substance, and Al and Hillary getting all the attention, it must be awfully tough to be Bill Clinton right now.

Apparently overcome by the urge to recapture the spotlight, the president threw a couple of tantrums over the last few days in Boston and Chicago. His rhetoric was remarkably unpresidential -- or should I say "unremarkably?" Since his understudy is running for president instead of him, I suppose it's appropriate that Clinton has donned the role of head attack dog, making his role reversal with Gore complete.

Before launching into his diatribe against George Bush, Dick Cheney, Senate and House Republicans and the GOP in general, Clinton said there is no need for negative campaigning this year. I guess he meant there is no need for negative campaigning other than by him.

In Boston, Clinton ridiculed Bush to an audience of Democrats replete with Kennedys. Clinton said Bush thinks he ought to be president because his "daddy was president." He then mocked Bush and Republicans for trying to appear "compassionate and humane."

Anxious to demonstrate his point, Clinton railed against Republicans for failing to act on his proposal to raise the minimum wage by a dollar to $6.15 an hour. Republicans, he said "were still working overtime to give tax breaks to the tiniest, wealthiest fraction of America's families and still doing nothing for the 10 million people who would benefit from a boost in the minimum wage."

A few days later Clinton spoke to a group of trial lawyers, who presumably were not among those 10 million. Wisely, he chose not to emphasize his patented class-warfare themes before that group, which collectively paid him a handsome quarter-million at their modest little luncheon. Instead, he focused on more uplifting themes, such as racist Senate Republicans blocking his judicial appointments of blacks and Hispanics. Before you assume I'm exaggerating, take a look at the president's words. "I've been trying for seven long years to fix that, and they've blocked every one. They're so determined to keep an African-American off that they have allowed a 25 percent vacancy rate." Nothing negative about that, Mr. Clinton.

In a frenzy to outdo himself, Clinton topped it off with a swipe at Dick Cheney. He reminded the group how Cheney had voted against recommending freedom for Nelson Mandela, saying it "takes your breath away." It didn't take Cheney's breath away. He had plenty left to refute these bogus and incendiary charges on the Sunday talk shows. Cheney explained that in 1986 he voted against a nonbinding resolution calling for Mandela's release because it was packaged with a resolution calling for U.S. recognition of Mandela's African National Congress, "a terrorist organization." Cheney said that while he had always supported efforts to free Mandela, he could not in good conscience support a "terrorist organization."

Clinton wasn't out of breath either, because he went on to tie the two issues (minority judicial appointments and Mandela) together. He likened his failed African-American and Hispanic judicial appointments to Mandela, saying they are "being held in a political jail because they can't get a hearing from this Republican Senate."

A somewhat loftier theme emerged in Clinton's speeches over the weekend. He contended that Democrat ideas are so superior that Republicans are now trying to blur the distinctions between the parties. Clinton has it exactly wrong. While Bush will bring a message of inclusion to the Philadelphia convention, he is not recommending that the party abandon its principles. A review of the platform, which Bush endorsed, confirms a Republican Party that is quite unashamed of its conservative positions. On all of the substantive platform battles, including abortion, gays in the military, promoting English as the nation's common language, limiting the role of the federal government in education and even abstinence education, conservatives prevailed.

I wonder if Al Gore sometimes wishes his boss would be a little less conspicuous on the campaign trial. For a study in contrasts, look to the Republican convention for a glimpse at the type of leadership timber George Bush wants to bring to this country. Perhaps Dick Cheney said it best: "We want to make Americans proud again by giving them a president they can respect."

~David Limbaugh of Cape Girardeau is a columnist for Creators Syndicate.