In the past couple of months since the primaries really ended, the polls have President Bill Clinton at least 20 points ahead of Bob Dole.

With all the recent scandals such as Whitewater and the FBI File blunder, people still say they will vote for Clinton in November.

However if you ask those potential voters why they are voting for the President, they’ll respond like this: Long silence… long silence… “Well, he’s been President before, I guess; so I think I’ll vote for him.” I’m certainly glad to see they’ve thought about it.

It’s easy to see why he is popular, though. He’s telling everyone what they want to hear. He’s telling everyone he’ll get tough on crime, increase student financial aid, reform welfare, save the environment, fix our cars, do our homework for us, etc. Why though did he come up with all these plans in the last 6 to 12 months? Why didn’t he think of these ideas the first three years of his administration? Think of it that way, and it’s easy to see he’s just giving us the typical election year sell.

Let’s look at the first three years of Bill Clinton’s presidency. Not only is it absent of any executive activity, but it also includes the biggest number of political mistakes, blunders, and miscues ever in American history.

When he entered office, Clinton tried showing us some of his liberal ideas through gays in the military and his wife’s ill-fated health care reform plan.

When he realized the electorate was offended by these obviously liberal programs, he quickly “changed his mind.” He found out that the majority of people in this country didn’t support such wide-eyed ideals that he and his cohorts suggest.

He did have one good idea in his term, though. The 100,000 police officers and “three strikes and you’re out” crime plan was a good start, even though it was tainted with typical liberal “crime prevention ideas” like midnight basketball.

However as is true with Clinton, what you see isn’t what you get. The 100,000 federally-funded officers is now only about 65,000; and the “three strikes” law was recently struck down by the Supreme Court. Well, so much for that idea.

Now in the past year he has given us all these new reasons to reelect him.

He’ll reform welfare without putting anyone on the streets like those mean Republicans want to do.

He’ll clean our water because Newt Gingrich wants you to get lead poisoning. He’ll raise our student aid because Bob Dole wants you to drop out if you can’t afford college. He’ll keep our streets safe because the Republicans want everyone to have guns. He’ll do all this and balance the budget in 7 years! Or is it 8? Or 5? I just can’t remember.

I can’t believe the electorate hasn’t seen through this yet. When the Republicans said they were going to make tax cuts to balance the budget, the press went mad. Then the public went mad. They kept asking, “How can we afford it?”

Unfortunately, no one is asking those questions in Washington now.

When Clinton proposes some new pie-in-the-sky idea, the press just marvels at it. They show how caring and compassionate he is. They show that he really cares about us, and he will take care of us. What is he, our father?! I thought the job of President entailed running the country, not being everyone’s nurse maid.

The press certainly won’t ask how we can afford these programs, since that’s just not important right now. All that’s important is that he cares.

What makes this even worse is that he is claiming conservative ideas to help him get elected.

He tried using Gov. Tommy Thompson’s (R-WI) welfare reform ideas as a model for his own plan. He seems to forget that he’s voted down initiatives like that while he was governor of Arkansas.

He also recently appointed a “drug czar,” who is the director of all federal anti-narcotics programs. When he was elected though, he said that the country didn’t need a drug czar. He didn’t have a drug czar until about three months ago.

His initiatives do seem suspect, don’t they? I don’t think I’ve ever heard or seen of any President that promises as much and gives us as little as Bill Clinton. It should be obvious to everyone he is courting the voters to keep his job.

This isn’t even the tip of the iceberg. When you take into account his moral turpitudes of the past four years, his reelection seems shaky.

Do you remember Gennifer Flowers, draft dodging, not inhaling, Vince Foster, Whitewater, the FBI files scandal, and Paula Jones?

For each of those scandals, there is probably another two or three we don’t know about. There has never been a President in our history who has disgraced the office of President more than Clinton.

Incredibly, all this hasn’t affected his ratings. I can’t comprehend why the voters would elect him.

What does it say about a country whose voters elect a leader that is a philanderer, harasser, coward, sneak, and associates with convicted felons? I’ll tell you, it doesn’t speak well for the voters of this country.

Is Bob Dole the perfect candidate for President? No, but is there such a thing as a perfect candidate? If you put the two together and objectively judge their performance, Bob Dole is clearly a better choice.

He will not try to lie to you, nor promise the world. He won’t put a rosy perspective on bad news. He will tell you the truth. The truth may not be what we want to hear, but we need to listen if we want to solve this country’s problems.

So, when you are at the voting booth this November, ask yourself this: Should I stick my head in the sand and elect Bill Clinton, who will tell me anything I want to hear so he can keep his job; or should I vote for Bob Dole, who will tell me the truth no matter how it will affect his political future. The choice is clear.

Robert Zeis is a senior in finance from Des Moines.