The courtship began two weeks ago when Dole blitzed the White House with faxes detailing his objections to GATT. The next morning three top administration officials – White House chief of staff Leon Panetta, Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen and Trade Rep. Mickey Kantor – met Dole for breakfast at the Palladin restaurant in the Watergate, where he lives. Clinton’s men accepted Dole’s idea to give Congress a role in any decision to withdraw from GATT if it believed U.S. interests were adversely affected. They rejected his call for a capital-gains tax cut tied to GATT. But Bentsen later promised Dole that the administration would consider the tax cut in 1995.
