Dole out in the cold as Clinton shows his power over women

The Republicans have seized on a Democratic sex scandal, but the vital female vote remains unimpressed, writes John Carlin in Chicago

Scene one: A swanky Chicago nightclub. Noisy, crowded, cavernous. A young woman in a short black dress is sprawled over the lap of a young man wearing a dark suit and a loose-fitting tie. She grabs him by the back of the neck and pulls his mouth towards her. He does not resist.

Scene Two: A party at Planet Hollywood, San Diego. A young couple are sitting shoulder to shoulder, stiff, knees locked together. She is wearing a long flowery dress and a white blouse buttoned up to the neck. He is wearing a Stars and Stripes tie. They are holding hands, eyes staring straight ahead.

Scene one was a Democratic Party bash on the fringes of last week's national convention; scene two an event two weeks ago during the Republican convention. The temptation to stereotype Democrats and Republicans along the lines these two snapshots suggest was encouraged by the differences in atmosphere at the vast amphitheatres where the conventions were staged.

The mood in San Diego was established by large affluent men in blue blazers standing solemnly to attention at the start of each morning and evening session, as an official recited the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. In Chicago, where they dispensed with the Pledge altogether, women of all ages and races, dressed in all manner of styles, set the tone of the proceedings. It was less a political conference than a giant disco - and it was the women, every time, who led.

The contrast in styles between the two big clans of American politics serves to illustrate perhaps the biggest difficulty Bob Dole faces in his quest to wrest the presidency from Bill Clinton this November. The figures from every national election since 1980 reveal a consistent pattern: while a majority of men vote Republican, a majority of women vote Democrat.

In the 1950s women voted according to the instructions of their husbands and fathers; in the 1960s and 1970s some women started to challenge the patriarchal order; in 1980, with Ronald Reagan's ascension to power, came the sea change, and since 1990 the gender gap has been growing progressively wider. In a survey a year ago, two out of three women said they voted differently from their husbands, while half the men laboured under the misapprehension that their wives voted as they did.

A New York Times/CBS poll conducted two weeks ago to test the immediate impact on voters of the Republican convention showed Mr Dole narrowing Mr Clinton's lead from 20 to 11 per cent. However, while men preferred Mr Clinton over Mr Dole by a margin of 6 percentage points, women supported Mr Clinton by a margin of 16 points.

Mr Dole has a mountain to climb. To win he has to persuade a lot of women who are comfortably entrenched in the Clinton camp to join the ascent. Thus it was that the Republican candidate thrilled to the news on Thursday morning that Dick Morris, Mr Clinton's chief campaign strategist, had been obliged to resign following a tabloid allegation that he was consorting with a prostitute, Sherry Rowlands.

Variously described as Mr Clinton's Svengali/Rasputin/Richelieu, Mr Morris is credited with restoring the President's appeal among that vast majority of voters who occupy the mushy centre of American politics. Employed by the White House in the aftermath of the Democrats' disastrous defeat in the mid-term congressional elections of November 1994, he has succeeded in nudging the President fiscally further and further to the right. So much so that Mr Dole has complained that his rival has stolen his ideas, notably those that emphasise balancing the budget and reducing "big government", from the Republicans.

The first line of speculation in Chicago was that Mr Dole's campaign team would seize the opportunity presented by the scandal to eat into the women's vote, the general assumption being that men will be more sympathetic to Mr Morris's weakness. And a member of the Dole team said on Thursday that it would provide further ammunition to attack the seaminess of a White House plagued by the never-ending Whitewater affair, allegations of marijuana-smoking among staff members and a president who has been consistently portrayed as a man with a wandering eye.

But logical as it might be for Mr Dole to assume that women would be disgusted by Mr Morris' behaviour, and that disgust would translate into Republican votes in November, precedent suggests that this is not the way the American female mind works. After all, the only concern here is that the Morris frisson will rub off on Mr Clinton. And Mr Clinton has shown that though dirt may stick - in contrast to the Teflon President, Ronald Reagan - it does not hurt. The story of his affair with Gennifer Flowers did not stop him winning the 1992 election, nor did it prevent the majority of women voting for him. And Mr Clinton's poll lead over George Bush was never nearly as commanding as his lead is today over Mr Dole.

The likelihood is that the indiscretions of Mr Morris, who until last week was virtually unknown outside the Washington bubble, will provoke some laughter but little political effect. A joke doing the rounds in Chicago on Friday was, "Who is President Clinton going to appoint as Dick Morris's successor?" "Hugh Grant."

Everything indicates that, barring more scandals, Mr Clinton will retain the electoral affections of most American women despite Mr Morris, just as Mr Grant has retained his appeal despite Divine Brown. Mr Clinton's charms are less obvious than Mr Grant's, but they are no less compelling.

He has four things going for him. Newt Gingrich, Hillary Clinton and his positions on guns and abortions. Combined they add up to a fifth: the perception that he cares more about vulnerable Americans than the Republicans, that - in a favourite Clinton phrase - he feels their pain.

Mr Gingrich, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, is Mr Dole's albatross. Unlike Mr Clinton's obscure strategist, he cannot shake him off. Early last year, when his "Second American Revolution" was in full flood, American men admired his bravado. But even then women detested him - both for his policies, which they viewed as heartless, and for his manner, which they found obnoxious. Today, the Gingrich revolution having been condemned to the dust-heap of history, he is the most unpopular American politician since Richard Nixon, among both men and women.

At the Democratic convention last week almost every speech contained an allusion to Mr Gingrich, contrasting his mean-spiritedness with the Democrats' compassion. Almost every speech also contained an allusion to Mrs Clinton, portraying her as an assertive, independent-minded woman who had stood up to her Republican tormentors and beaten them. Her own speech was serious, thoughtful and dull. Almost as if she were deliberately marking out the differences between herself and Elizabeth Dole, who stole the show in San Diego with her fawning, gushing tribute to "the man I love". Mrs Dole won plaudits from the TV critics but Mrs Clinton came closer to the liberated ideal to which modern American women aspire. To borrow from President Clinton's speech, Mrs Dole is a bridge to the past, Mrs Clinton a bridge to the future.

Much as the fiscal policies of the two parties have merged there are two electorally critical social issues on which they differ starkly. One of them is guns. Mr Clinton said he would increase the restrictions on gun ownership. Mr Dole, whose campaign is backed by the National Rifle Association, is committed to making guns more freely available. The other issue is abortion. Mr Clinton is pro-choice. Mr Dole, a firm believer in the notion that "big government" should keep clear of Americans' private affairs, wishes to impose legal limits on what a woman does with her own body.

On both issues men are evenly split, but the overwhelming majority of women are on Mr Clinton's side. And nothing will change that between now and November. Mr Dole's best hope would seem to be a low turn-out among women voters, which is what happened in 1994. But that appears unlikely - partly because of 1994, partly also because of a vigorous multi-million dollar campaign launched by the Democratic women's organisation called Emily's List to persuade women to go the polls.

The president of Emily's List, Ellen Malcolm, spoke at the Democratic convention last week. "Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole are about to fall into a gender gap the likes of which they have never seen before," she declared, to resounding cheers. And then she added, with a cold certainty that would have chilled Mr Dole to the bone, "We know that when women vote, women win".