Issues Are a Non-Issue This Time Around

The Democratic presidential candidates are swarming New Hampshire, along with the media, the volunteers, the yard signs and the incessant television ads that descend on the Granite State every four years. But one common ingredient of past campaigns is almost completely absent: an argument over issues.

After former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri suffered in Iowa from attacking each other on Medicare and Iraq, the candidates have been downplaying their differences on issues to focus on personal characteristics.

“At this juncture, the broader character and experience [of the contenders] are driving things much more than any specific issue,” said David Axelrod, a senior advisor to Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.

The absence of a pointed debate on issues has given the New Hampshire race a more temperate tone than the Iowa contest. But some analysts believe it also has helped freeze the alignment that emerged from Iowa, with Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts establishing a clear lead in the polls.

Since his rivals would probably be hard-pressed to sustain their candidacies if Kerry retains that advantage in February’s primaries and caucuses, the incentive may quickly mount for them to find sharper distinctions with him.

“I suspect this kind of self-imposed truce is not going to last much more than another week,” said veteran Democratic strategist James Carville. “Political campaigns, when someone has begun to lose, they don’t just inevitably accept defeat: They will try something different.”

Few of the other Democrats had spent much time planning how to contrast themselves with Kerry; for months, the focus was on differentiating themselves from Dean, who dominated the race in the last half of 2003.

“This is a new world for us,” said Matt Bennett, communications director for retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark. “We frankly didn’t anticipate having to do a lot of contrast with John Kerry.”

Clark, Edwards and Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut have found that differences they had established against Dean have become irrelevant against Kerry -- leaving them scrambling to find ways to stand out on this new political terrain.

Intriguingly, it’s Dean who appears to have made the most progress developing the arguments to use against Kerry -- if the former governor does well enough in Tuesday’s New Hampshire vote to press that case.

“The whole question with Kerry is all these C words: caution and compromise and convenience,” said one senior Dean advisor. “If Dean is the guy who can be clarity and courage versus compromise and cautiousness, then you have a real interesting contrast and issues come back to light.”

None of this surfaced when the candidates debated Thursday for the final time before the New Hampshire vote. Apart from a Dean jab at most of his rivals for supporting the Iraq war, the candidates generally avoided challenging each other.

It’s been nearly as calm on the stump. When Clark was asked late last week to explain his foreign policy differences with Kerry and Edwards, he recoiled as if he had been handed a snake. Clark said he had not studied their positions well enough to give an opinion.

Nor have the candidates focused on their differences in their ads. Kerry’s New Hampshire ads had been touting his refusal to repeal the portions of President Bush’s tax cuts that benefit middle-class families -- a position that contrasts with Dean. But Kerry’s campaign has shelved that ad in favor of one that shows voters testifying to his experience and willingness to confront corporate interests.

Dean’s ads still have the edgiest message, accusing the other Democrats -- though not by name -- of failing to sufficiently resist Bush on the Iraq war and economic policy. But even that is a faint cry from the searing spot Dean ran in Iowa attacking Edwards, Kerry and Gephardt by name for their votes authorizing the war, or the tough Gephardt response lashing Dean for his views on Medicare.

Several factors have muted the debate on issues in New Hampshire, experts say.

One is the fallout from the high-voltage exchanges between Dean and Gephardt, who both plummeted in the polls while the ads were on the air and then finished behind Kerry and Edwards. “There is no doubt that people are a bit gun-shy after Iowa because voters there recoiled from the attacks,” Axelrod said.

Also, Clark, Edwards and Lieberman have less to argue about with Kerry than with Dean.

Unlike Dean, for instance, the other four only want to repeal the portion of the Bush tax cuts that benefited the affluent. All of them except Clark supported the Iraq war. And Clark’s contradictory statements on the conflict have kept him from spotlighting the issue.

“With Kerry in the lead, the issue contrasts are less sharp,” said Dan Gerstein, Lieberman’s deputy communications director.

Dean’s recent difficulties -- from his controversial comment that Saddam Hussein’s capture had not made America safer to his frenzied concession speech in Iowa -- have also put a higher premium on stability and judgment for many voters.

“We like to argue that Dean doesn’t really get the middle class and their concerns, but that doesn’t hold a candle to whether or not he’s going to erupt and strangle a world leader,” said one senior Kerry advisor.

The natural tendency is for differences on issues to sharpen as the field contracts, Carville said. And though Kerry does not provide quite as clear a target as Dean, there are issues that can spark arguments between him and the other Democrats.

Edwards and Dean are much less sympathetic than Kerry to free trade -- a topic likely to be highlighted in South Carolina, which holds its primary Feb. 3.

Lieberman, if he survives a potentially poor showing in New Hampshire, is likely to accuse Kerry of vacillating by voting to support the war in Iraq but not the $87 billion Bush recently requested to support reconstruction there and in Afghanistan.

Since the Iowa vote, most of the other candidates clearly have had problems delineating sharp enough differences with Kerry to move many voters. Edwards has stressed his experience as a trial lawyer before winning his Senate seat in 1998 and his modest upbringing. Clark, after a detour into questioning Kerry’s decision to leave the military after his service in Vietnam, has stressed his Southern roots, his executive -- as opposed to legislative -- experience and his own modest beginnings. Lieberman, fighting for a third-place finish, has focused on contrasting himself with Clark.

“It’s been kind of a kooky strategy week,” said a top Kerry advisor.

Only Dean has shown signs of developing a clear strategy against Kerry. He spent much of last week laying out the first part of what his campaign envisions as a two-stage argument.

In his campaign appearances and advertising, Dean has tried to position himself as a leader committed to tough choices, even when they are unpopular, such as signing into law civil unions for gays in Vermont.

Next, the campaign plans to depict Kerry as the opposite: a political trimmer who bends to the prevailing winds.

As evidence, the Dean camp cites Kerry’s positions on Bush’s education reform bill and the Patriot Act -- measures the senator voted for but now criticizes.

“I think that is what is really going to become the crux of the race,” the senior advisor to Dean said.

Dean previewed that argument Saturday when, in remarks to reporters aboard his campaign bus, he chided Kerry for opposing the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and supporting last year’s war with Iraq.

“I would be deeply concerned about that kind of judgment in the White House,” Dean said.

But Dean’s advisors concluded he could not fully raise these arguments without first rehabilitating his own image. The risk to Dean is that if he doesn’t run strongly in New Hampshire, he may find the audience for his case radically diminished by the time he’s ready to deliver it.

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Times staff writers Mark Z. Barabak, Eric Slater and Jim Rainey contributed to this report.