First Couple’s barnstorming of key congressional districts hit trouble early on: North Carolina telephone questioners pestered Bill on Whitewater and wouldn’t be diverted; Chicago Cub fans booed Hillary at season opener . . . Times-Mirror poll shows high levels of public satisfaction (63 per cent) with current health-care system; health-care reform is well down in national priorities—4th . . . Two Ohio economics professors predict Clinton plan will cost one million jobs and billions in lost income by 1999. “A catastrophe,” says study released by American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) . . . Clinton’s end-of-tour Kansas City telethon resulted in squabble with White House press corps over rigged questions . . . Back home, White House bunker mentality deepening. Time was frozen out of photo session because of unfriendly cover photo of George Stephanopoulos. Clinton aides blistering Treasury’s Roger Altman for disclosures about Stephanopoulos . . . David Gergen’s damage control slipping. Attempt to verify that American Spectator was planning new Clinton exposé by reporter Daniel Wattenberg rebuffed by editor Bob Tyrrell. Gergen also bombed when he said, “Money has never been a central factor in the Clintons’ lives,” just as story of Hillary’s commodity killing broke. Said one Chicago commodities expert: The average investor has as much chance of similar gains “as I have of driving to Hawaii.”
On Republican side, William Bennett—his Book of Virtues remains high on best-seller list—says he’ll think over summer about conservative pressures for him to run for President . . . USA Today poll shows GOP voters giving Bob Dole highest positive rating (20 per cent), best name recognition…. James Baker, reportedly gearing up for presidential run. will have to deal with Lyn Nofziger memoirs, which claim Baker helped sabotage Reagan revolution while acting as Reagan’s chief of staff . . . Seen in New Hampshire and Iowa in recent months: both former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Sen. Phil Gramm . . . Jack Kemp remains in limelight, helping other GOPers in reelection campaigns . . . Dark horse Gov. Carroll Campbell (S.C.) made a hit with his vehement objections to Clinton health plan at Governors Conference…. Hot button in Texas: GOP candidate for lieutenant governor Tex Lezar—an associate attorney general in Reagan Administration—is scoring by advertising on Rush Limbaugh show that he’s running against “Clinton Democrats” . . . California conservatives heartened by entry of Ron Unz in primary against Gov. Pete Wilson. Unz has signed pollster-consultant Arnie Steinberg, former Jim Buckley strategist . . . Polls show former Rep. William Dannemeyer running even with soft-on-social-issues Rep. Michael Huffington in California. Senate primary. Huffington, who spent over $6 million to win House seat last year, has financial edge . . . New York Times’ latest effort to downsize Reagan years giving art lovers a hoot. Arts-section puff piece on Hillary for hanging modern art attacked Republican “philistinism,” saying Reagan White House corridors were hung with pictures of cowboys “in an America that never existed, a land where the skies are always blue and the good guys always win.” For the record: Reagan pictures were anthropologically important paintings of Indian civilization by famed American artist George Catlin.
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