Iowa Electronic Market, 8/15/96
	Vote Share			Winner-Takes-All
	Dole	Clinton		Dole	Clinton
Open	43.6%	53.1%		31.8%	66.7%
Close	43.6%	53.1%		31.8%	68.3%
Pundits' Index
Last Week: Clinton: 85 percent, up 3 from the previous week Dole: 14 percent, down 3 from the previous week Perot: 1 percent, unchanged (at 1) This Week: Clinton: 75 percent, down 10 from last week Dole: 24 percent, up 10 from last week Perot: 1 percent, unchanged (at 1)

During SLATE's week off, Bill Clinton agreed to sign the GOP welfare-reform bill, and the pundits, taking their cue from congressional Republicans, left Bob Dole for dead. But this week brings a dramatic turnaround in both the polls and the Iowa market. As for the pundits, they believe that the GOP's messiah has arrived, in the person of Jack Kemp. (Kemp's selection as Dole's running mate produced a record trading day in the Iowa market.) Conservative commentators are suddenly reasserting their kinship to the GOP nominee. "I believe in redemption and salvation," allowed Bob Novak, reflecting the widespread view among right-leaning pundits that Dole somehow had needed their forgiveness.

A cardinal rule of journalism is that the story has to change. The pent-up demand for a Dole turnaround was enormous. So the pundits naturally overreacted--with gratitude and relief--to the first good news for Dole in weeks. Dole's rally in the Pundits' Index is broad and deep. Even left-leaners deemed the pick near-perfect and speculated that the convention might give Dole a total bounce of 10 to 12 points in the polls. Editorialists effused, and TV's talking heads declared Kemp "dynamic," "vibrant," "tremendously articulate," "spiritual," "visionary," and "a brilliant choice." Nina Totenberg pronounced him "cute." William Safire heralded the revision of Dole's image from inscrutable fool to inscrutable genius: All along, Dole "was thinking tax cuts. And he must also have been thinking Jack Kemp. So there is a strategy in his mind; he is working toward it; he just doesn't tell us all of it at once."

Dole's choice of Kemp surprised the pundits and thereby impressed them. Idealists hailed it as a sign of unexpected imagination; cynics welcomed it as evidence that Dole was willing, after all, to do whatever it took to win. Dole buyers reasoned that Kemp speaks well, projects enthusiasm, will excite the party's convention and its voting base with his ideological passion, will attract swing voters with his upbeat style. And, unlike Dole, he can sell tax cuts with a straight face. There was excitement about a fire-and-ice October TV debate between Kemp and Gore (though the early money is on Gore).

More bearish analysts brought up the long-running Dole-Kemp feud. After predicting that "the press" would dredge up policy differences between the two men (on immigration, affirmative action, welfare, and labor), the pundits proceeded to do just that. The chat shows percolated with tales of Dole deriding Kemp's intellect, hair spray, and supply-side theories. Several cautioned that Kemp could be haunted by his "flaky" economic ideas, particularly the gold standard. Many pundits warned that Kemp's refusal to bend his principles makes him a "loose cannon" in a Dole campaign. "In two weeks, we'll have stories with sources saying that Kemp's unhappy that Dole's not pushing the tax cut harder," predicted Bill Kristol. "I give it about three weeks before Bob Dole leaves him on the tarmac with his bags," wrote Maureen Dowd. While the market exults that Kemp has what Dole lacks, it worries that conversely, Dole lacks what Kemp has. Hard-bitten pundits scoff that running mates don't swing many votes and that convention bounces don't last.

The weekend line on the Reform Party convention was that Perot's nomination was a "done deal." While several pundits held out hope that a lackluster Dole campaign and a $100 million Reform Party bankroll could make Perot a serious player, they feared that Perot might well destroy his already meager chances by reducing his convention to a rigged "laughingstock."

--William Saletan

William Saletan covers politics for several magazines and is the author of a forthcoming book on the politics of abortion.