Dukakis, Gephardt Emerge in a Search for Surrogates

The race for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination was supposed to be between New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo and former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart. It still may be. Only now, with Cuomo and Hart out of the race, their constituencies are turning to other candidates to act as surrogates.

Jesse Jackson is still the only candidate in the Democratic race with a national reputation. But two other contenders have been moving up to fill the void left by the Cuomo and Hart withdrawals: Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis and Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt.

The 1988 nominating process begins in Iowa, and campaigning has been most intense there. The latest poll of Iowa Democrats shows Gephardt jumping from 9% to 24%, catapulting him into first place. Jackson and Dukakis also improved their standing, to 13% and 11% respectively. No other Democrat has reached double digits.

Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois, the latest Democrat to enter the race, has also picked up some support, but most analysts attribute that to the “Graceland” factor. Simon has a suspiciously high level of name recognition, which suggests that many voters may be confusing him with the pop singer. (“Is Art Garfunkel available for vice president?” desperate Democrats have been heard to ask.)

A pattern seems to be forming in the Democratic race. Dukakis is becoming the Establishment liberal. That is the Cuomo role. Like Cuomo, Dukakis is a Northeastern governor with urban ethnic roots (Greek Orthodox, with a Jewish wife). He is admired by Cuomo and endorsed by home-state Sen. Edward M. Kennedy--who remarked, “I always said we should have a President from Massachusetts.”

Unlike Cuomo, Dukakis has a cool and pragmatic image. No one has ever used “passionate” or “soulful” to describe Dukakis. But he passes all the liberal litmus tests. (Or almost all. Gay activists oppose him because he refused to permit homosexuals in his state to serve as foster parents.) Dukakis is a conventional liberal, which means he is a centrist on the Massachusetts political spectrum. (According to the conservative National Review, that makes him a Maoist in national politics.) After a shaky start in Iowa--he suggested that bankrupt farmers grow Belgian endive, and was quickly labeled the champion of yuppie agriculture--Dukakis has been gaining support from that state’s considerable liberal base.

Dukakis has two additional advantages. He is credited with masterminding his state’s spectacular economic boom. That sounds like just what the country needs after Ronald Reagan--a good manager. Moreover, Dukakis made his career as a reformer running against corrupt pols. That sounds like just what the country needs after the Hart fiasco--a squeaky clean candidate. No great vision, perhaps, but do we really need inspirational leadership after eight years of Reagan?

Dukakis has spent his entire political life in Massachusetts, a state with no real Republicans. (Its Republican Party, whose last important figure was Elliot L. Richardson, has become a joke.) Dukakis’s aggressive use of government would be called state socialism by many conservatives, but it is not the slightest bit controversial in Massachusetts. And it is not likely to be a problem for him in the 1988 Democratic primaries.

Several of Hart’s top political operatives have already gone over to the Dukakis campaign. Those are people who supported Hart not because he was an insurgent but because he was the front-runner. Said one, “I always work for the most liberal candidate who has a realistic chance of winning.” As the emerging E s tablishment liberal, Dukakis is signing up key Washington operatives like political consultant Anne Wexler. Look for Dukakis to be endorsed by nuclear-freeze groups, women’s-rights activists, good-government leaders, abortion-rights advocates and environmentalists.

What would a Dukakis Administration look like? It would look like the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where Dukakis spent his one term out of office. We would have government by case study--carefully planned, efficient, well-managed and honest. Common Cause would be happy.

Gephardt is becoming the insurgent in the 1988 Democratic race, the role Hart played against Walter F. Mondale in 1984 and hoped to repeat against Cuomo in 1988. That is because of his position on foreign trade. The so-called Gephardt Amendment, which passed the House of Representatives last month, mandates tough sanctions against countries that have large trade surpluses with the United States and are found to engage in unfair trading practices. The amendment has been denounced by the Reagan Administration, business leaders, trade specialists, foreign-policy experts, respected economists, diplomats, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. In other words, by the entire national Establishment.

The Establishment regards the Gephardt Amendment as protectionist. And protectionism, like isolationism, is not a respectable position in U.S. politics. Politicians who make protectionist speeches, like Mondale in 1983, are accused by the nation’s editorial writers of pandering to popular prejudice. And they usually back down. But not Gephardt. He has discovered that pandering to popular prejudice is a good way to get votes.

As a result of his trade position, Gephardt is getting a lot of labor support in Iowa, but that does not make him the Establishment candidate. On this issue, organized labor takes the anti-Establishment position. Gephardt has also campaigned tirelessly in Iowa, and he comes from a neighboring state. But his growing support there is probably not based on handshaking or neighborliness. It is based on anti-Establishment populism, the same force that propelled Jimmy Carter to the Democratic nomination in 1976 and fueled Hart’s 1984 campaign.

With Hart out of the race, many insiders expected Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. to become the anti-Establishment insurgent. He still might. After all, Biden has not yet officially entered the race. But Gephardt has stolen a march on Biden because he has something Biden doesn’t have: an issue. It is a risky issue because it could make Gephardt look like a stooge for organized labor, as Mondale did when he won the Iowa caucuses in 1984. The best thing labor could do for Gephardt would be to withhold any pre-caucus endorsement. Moreover, protectionism tends to divide Democrats along class lines, workers threatened with unemployment against upper-middle-class consumers. Yet, the issue does accomplish one thing for Gephardt. It makes him look tough. It conveys the impression that he’ll stand up to the Japanese and the Soviets just as he stands up to the New York Times.

Gephardt does not sell ideology. “It may be terribly inaccurate to say that I’m a liberal or a conservative, or even that I’m a moderate,” he said last year. “I don’t think those terms get us very far.” What he sells is effectiveness, and his victory on the trade issue added to his reputation as an effective leader. Gephardt says he admires fellow Missourian Harry S. Truman because “he had tremendous courage and a willingness to do something, get off the dime, move the country somewhere and try to solve problems. You can’t philosophize forever.”

Gephardt, like Dukakis, is running as an effective manager. Also like Dukakis, he is wholesome, earnest and squeaky clean. (He likes to joke that he and his wife are Dick and Jane, the ultimate middle-American, Midwestern stereotype. It is no joke.) But if Dukakis continues to consolidate his standing as the candidate of the liberal Establishment, Gephardt could easily become the anti-Establishment hero of 1988. It would be insiders versus outsiders. Liberals versus populists. Blue-collar union voters versus upper-middle-class professionals. Very much like the split between Mondale and Hart in 1984, or the anticipated split between Cuomo and Hart in 1988.

In other words, the roles already exist. We are just waiting for the players. If they turn out to be Dukakis and Gephardt, there will be a special irony. Dukakis, the favorite son of Washington’s liberal Establishment, has never spent any time in Washington. He is a total outsider. Gephardt, on the other hand, is a prince of the Congress. As chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, he is one of the party’s leaders on Capitol Hill. His Democratic colleagues, most of whom will be delegates to the 1988 Democratic National Convention, are his political base. Gephardt, in other words, is the ultimate Washington insider trying to play the outsider by espousing populist causes like trade sanctions and tax reform.

The front-runner in the 1988 Democratic race is whoever beats Dukakis in the New Hampshire primary. The only candidate who can’t do that is Dukakis. As governor of a neighboring state, the Establishment candidate and the early favorite in New Hampshire, Dukakis will gain little from a victory there, especially if the other candidates concede the state to him. Dukakis will then win the New Hampshire primary “as expected.”

Very likely, however, someone will gain momentum in Iowa and then overtake the New Hampshire favorite within a single week. Why wouldn’t that be a surprise? Because it happens every four years.