WASHINGTON (Mar 22, 1996 7:09 p.m. EST) -- If we shall know them by their words, President Clinton and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole have some fast talking to do to draw early distinctions in the presidential campaign.
Voters who want a $500 child tax credit, school choice, a liberal trade record, modest immigration cuts, advocacy of cultural values and five-year welfare caps could, if swayed by words alone, just flip a coin.
The polarizing Republican contest is over -- all that talk of ripping up trade pacts, killing the tax code, raising the barricades against the supposed immigrant invasion.
In its place are differences of degree between a Democratic president who has appropriated some Republican themes and a Senate leader steeped in that chamber's tradition of compromise and sober second thought.
Differences are sure to be sharpened in the months ahead and shifted by currents not yet born.
Dole jumped to that task in the last few days, pushing a raft of positions at odds with Clinton on product liability, a ballistic missile defense system and shifting powers to the states.
Until now, some of the Dole-Clinton rhetoric has been mix-and-match.
"I've never been one to go out there and say we've got, you know, to unload the federal government," says the Republican. "It does a lot of good things."
"The era of big government," intones the Democrat, "is over."
Both want to "end welfare as we know it" but have yet to deliver.
These are words of two consensus-builders, craftsmen who to some extent believe that what's right is what works.
Even on matters that most clearly divide them -- from abortion to gun control -- where they stand does not necessarily show where they would draw the line.
While both are self-styled regulatory reformers, Clinton has bragged about cutting rules and programs to achieve the smallest government in 30 years while Dole would flat out close four departments and several agencies.
But Dole has yet to spell out what functions would end or simply be farmed out elsewhere in government.
Back when Clinton was emphasizing business-friendly reform of environmental rules, Dole was pitching that and more, including limits on endangered species, protected wetlands and the power of government to devalue private land by regulation.
Those remain his positions. But environmental politics are in flux, with Clinton getting greener by the day and many congressional Republicans feeling pressure to do the same.
Last year, Dole threw his energy into a constitutional balanced budget amendment opposed by Clinton and came up one vote short. His promise to make that the first proposal of his presidency marks the amendment as one likely clash of the campaign -- if a balanced budget agreement by then does not take the wind out of it.
On some other matters where they part, Dole has held his fire, putting off a term limits vote because he didn't have the support and saying it will take a GOP president and GOP Congress to roll back Clinton's ban on assault-style weapons.
While both would give more flexibility to states to run welfare, Dole, unlike Clinton, would switch the program to block grants as part of his pledge to move many responsibilities out of Washington.
Dole would maintain federal standards, if fewer than Clinton. The no-strings GOP notion is out of play unless Dole revives it.
On taxes, reformers are divided on whether Dole can deliver on his promise to work for an unspecified revamping of the tax system. Like Clinton, he's a skeptic on the flat tax.
Dole made his commitment in a nod to former rival Steve Forbes' success in highlighting tax reform. Now Dole and Clinton are set to define their positions in relation to each other.
It's not like they're strangers. Over months of budget battling, they've spent greater stretches of time together than do many of the families whose values they want to save.