Viagra on the Dole

New Hampshire

IN 1996, Bob described his presidential campaign as `one last mission for my generation'. Three years later, fortified by Viagra, Bob's back. In his nightly TV commercials for the l'il blue diamonds, the second world war veteran begins by conceding that `it's a little embarrassing to talk about ED' and clutches his withered arm, subtly reminding the audience that, while this appendage may hang limp and useless, these days nothing else does. ED stands for `erectile dysfunction', from which hitherto none of us had known Bob suffered. From his various doomed presidential campaigns, we knew about his `electoral dysfunction', but there are, alas, no tablets you can take for that.

Nonetheless, the year 2000 beckons with yet another last mission for his generation. Bob's wife Elizabeth is the first 'serious' woman presidential candidate, which makes him the first serious candidate to be the first First Gentleman. Unfortunately, Bob finds it hard to take anything seriously. The other day he gave an interview to the New York Times which suggested that, since the Viagra kicked in, his brains are in his crotch. It's a little embarrassing to talk about ED - Elizabeth , that is - but Bob did his best. Asked why his wife, in contrast to his own approach, prefers carefully scripted speeches, he replied, 'I knew a lot about issues.'

Whether or not it's due to her knowing so little about issues, Bob couldn't help noticing the lack of big campaign donations: `If she can't raise the money, obviously it's pretty hard to be a candidate.' Bob himself was thinking of writing a cheque - to her rival, Senator John . `He's not raising the money that George Bush is,' he said. 'I think we need to keep good people in the race. So I've thought about ways to help .' Of course, despite Bob's best efforts, could end up losing the nomination to Elizabeth. So, asked the Times, did Bob think his wife could beat Al Gore? `It's too early to tell,' he decided. All the Viagra in the world couldn't overcome the headache Elizabeth had that night: had the interview gone on another ten minutes, Bob would probably have endorsed Gore.

Opposites attract, but rarely on such a scale as the s, whose marriage is almost as bizarre as the Clintons'. Elizabeth is rehearsed to the hilt, Bob is open-mike night at the Improv. Club. In the '96 campaign, he could never stay `on message': he had plenty of messages but kept wandering off them; Mrs has no message but stays on it ever more fiercely. At a recent meeting with `business leaders', not only were her answers scripted and rehearsed, but so were their questions. Her aides had the grace to explain sheepishly, as they passed out the permitted topics to the chief execs, that they were only doing this because it was early in the campaign: Mrs has only just stepped down from her job with the Red Cross; obviously, she'll loosen up and start taking unscripted questions later on - say, around late October next year. For the most part, perfect strangers have been happy to string along. With hindsight, we should have known that her husband would be the only guy not to stick to the script.

Mrs went on CBS to do a bit of damage limitation, confirming rumours that she'd locked Viagra Boy out of their pad. `Bob had a little visit to the family woodshed. He looked pretty good there,' she purred, her genteel ante-bellum vowels forcing themselves through her unwavering smile. The ` woodshed' is an alarming image - a nightmare anti-Viagra ad where Bob is stretched across half a cord of split logs while his steel magnolia flays him into submission. In fact, the s live in the Watergate complex in Washington. But a couple of months back they also bought the place next door -- Monica Lewinsky's old apartment - and it seems certain that Bob's going to be spending a lot of time in there, waiting, like Monica, for the call that never comes. He's beyond the help of Viagra now. As House majority leader Dick Armey observed, `He's going to be singing "Strangers in the Night" for a long time.'

If Mrs 's steamed, think how John feels. Just as the Senator is establishing himself as a viable candidate, Bob endorses him: I'll bet the cheques have really dried up now. But Bob isn't the only prominent Republican declining to climb aboard his wife's bandwagon. Last week, my assistant Melissa was offered a substantial increase over the pittance she gets from me to become Mrs 's campaign `field director' for northern New Hampshire. I'm happy to say she declined, because of the candidate's evolving position on guns.

Two weeks ago, Mrs made news with her dramatic decision to adopt a policy position on something, as opposed to just having good hair and doing her Oprah walkabout routine among the audience. At the presidential candidates' dinner down in Manchester, NH, she took it upon herself to support Bill Clinton's position on `assault weapons' and to come out against automatic weapons. This being New Hampshire, there were a few jeers, though it could have been worse: she was doing her Oprah shtick at the time, and at the point in her speech where she unveiled her gun position, she happened to have wandered over to red-blooded Senator Bob Smith's section of the room.

I'll wager those tables were packing some serious heat. On CNN the other day, after Senator Smith had repeated his opposition to background checks, safety locks, etc., David of the liberal weekly the Nation asked wearily, `Is there not a single gun-control measure out there in the universe that you would think is a good idea and might lead to increased safety?' The Senator considered for a moment, and then replied, 'A steady hand.'

Mrs 's anti-gun talk didn't go down well up here, but the actress and talk-show host Rosie loved it, and the New York Times's star columnist Maureen hailed her for her 'courage'. It wasn't that courageous. Automatic weapons have effectively been illegal since 1934, and `assault weapons' is a bogus category invented by the gun-control lobby because it sounds as if they're expressly designed to mow down schoolyards.

In other words, it's a bit of Clintonian posturing. Harmless enough, but it didn't stop there. 'I didn't mind the assault weapons stuff,' said Melissa. 'I could have talked my way around that. But then she came out against concealed-carry! Can you believe that?'

`Concealed-carry' laws permit citizens to carry concealed weapons, and those states that have them - like New Hampshire -- have lower crime rates than those that don't. In recent years, some of those states - like Florida - have wised up and introduced concealed-carry, leading to predictions of OK Corral shoot-outs at every traffic incident. In fact, gun crime in those states has declined, because predators can no longer assume their victims will be unarmed. Many women are particularly partial to concealed-carry laws because they reckon they deter the unwanted attentions of men. They certainly deter me. I've given up on Clintonian harassment of subordinates because, if I tried the Kathleen breast-lunge or Paula pants-drop with Melissa, my next of kin would be picking bits of my skull out of the ceiling.

Perhaps this isn't an issue with Mrs and her bullet-proof hairdo: judging from Bob's rapid dispatch to the woodshed, Nurse Ratchet has no problem dealing with men who get out of line. But, in New Hampshire at least, she's having a real problem getting women into line. Neither Rosie nor Maureen have votes in our state's first-in-the-nation primary, and those who do are deserting in droves: according to one poll, Mrs 's support here has halved in the last month. `She was offering a lot of money,' said Melissa, sighing wistfully as she folded my pitiful paycheque, `but I have my principles.' So does Fran Wendelboe, state representative for New Hampton, NH, who quit the campaign last weekend. 'I can't defend her position on guns,' she says. 'I still respect her. She plays really well to the moderates and the soccer moms and the Democrats.' Fran carries a concealed handgun herself, and as a legislator has an A-plus rating from GO-NH (Gun Owners of New Hampshire).

She may have a point about the soccer moms. Of the 11 Republican candidates, Mrs is the only one to take an antigun position, though Steve may be reconsidering. Last week the billionaire goofball's state director quit the campaign after being arrested for pulling a gun on a fellow patron of the Black Brimmer restaurant in Manchester. In 1996, Peter was credited with winning New Hampshire for Pat , but this year he and many of the shrewder members of the ` brigades' were lured away by the big dollars of the camp.

The reality of next year's compressed nominating season is that, if you want to stay in the race long enough to position yourself as the alternative to George W. Bush, you'll need to do well in New Hampshire. The three most important states in the electoral college are Florida, Texas and California: Governor Bush will, it's assumed, deliver his own state, Texas, plus his brother Jeb's Florida. That makes him the only presidential candidate who can afford to lose California: for that reason alone, the Republican establishment will do everything they can to ensure he's the candidate. has the money to stick around as long as he wants; , Smith, Gary Bauer and Alan Keyes figure the social conservative vote will eventually coalesce around one of them; and Mrs and Ohio Congressman John are basically playing for the vice-presidential spot on the ticket.

Perhaps her pollsters have done their sums and figure they can put together enough moderate Republicans and independents to give Mrs a distinctive constituency. But, even so, there's something about her approach that's somehow . . . unRepublican. Policies that result in the complete opposite of the stated consequences are all the rage in America, but mainly on the Democrat side. You bomb Kosovo to prevent a humanitarian disaster: it leads to a humanitarian disaster. You storm the Branch compound at Waco to stop the child abuse: yes, it stops the child abuse, but only because you've killed all the kids. You outlaw concealed weapons to prevent gun crime: it leads to more gun crime, but hey, your intentions were honourable and progressive, and that gives you a theoretical superiority. Mrs is beginning to sound like a great running-mate. . for Al Gore.

Worse, in cosying up to Rosie rather than Fran, Mrs is in danger of becoming this year's Steve or Lamar Alexander. In 1996, Mr and the former Tennessee governor, Mr Alexander, got all the raves from the media establishment. But, on the ground, they were invisible: outside the schoolhouse polling stations, these campaigns didn't exist. At the candidates' dinner, Mrs mustered enough campaign workers to fill one table, as opposed to four for Bob Smith. If anything, she seems happy not to be encumbered with supporters: she was the only candidate not to work the room before the hors d'oeuvres, presumably being too busy rehearsing her ad libs and waiting for the concrete hair lacquer to set.

In his Viagra commercial, Bob hopes that `men with ED will get proper treatment'. Watching Bob banished to the woodshed, men are beginning to get a glimpse of the treatment they'll be getting with ED - Elizabeth . When he's eventually let back into the apartment, Elizabeth will no doubt be waiting for him like Mae West: `Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?' Either way, he's in trouble.