When the Candidate Must Quit

The demise of Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s presidential campaign, like that of Gary Hart before him, illustrates a basic fact about U.S. politics. The system has been transformed over the past 20 years. It has been transformed by changes in the rules and by changes in technology. We are just beginning to grasp the consequences.

For Biden, of course, the changes became dramatically clear last week. He suffered the consequences of the videotape revolution. Speeches given by Biden and speeches given by others could be juxtaposed to see if there were any suspicious similarities. When Biden misrepresented his academic record at a private meeting of New Hampshire voters, C-SPAN cameras were there to record it. As many commentators pointed out, Biden is not the first candidate to borrow the words of others or to exaggerate his credentials. But he is perhaps the first to be caught on videotape.

We are also beginning to learn some of the larger consequences of making the system more open and visible. For one thing, the press has become a key player. That raises issues of privacy and responsibility. Moreover, political parties no longer control the nominating process. We now select candidates by means of a trial by ordeal in which personal qualities take on enormous significance. Finally, both parties have become more uniform. In contests where issue differences are small, personal considerations loom large.

At his Sept. 17 press conference, Biden acknowledged that he had been intellectually sloppy and had done stupid things. He claimed that these were honest but dumb mistakes--failures of intelligence, not character.

The problem is that given the system we now have and the environment of the 1988 contest, Biden’s “dumb mistakes” were sufficient to doom his campaign. Like all but one of the other Democratic candidates, Biden was not well known. He was from a small state and had no national reputation or constituency. As a result, people had to judge him on the basis of a first impression. And the first impression was not good. A poll taken early last week, just before Biden’s withdrawal, showed the candidate viewed favorably by 3% and unfavorably by 16%.

Jesse Jackson is the one Democrat in the race with a national following, and his experience in 1984 shows how important that is. When Jackson got in trouble over anti-Semitic remarks, he had a base of supporters willing to stand by him. The same thing happened to Ronald Reagan last year when he was caught selling arms to Iran. Neither Biden nor Hart had that kind of base. Nor, for that matter, do any of the other candidates except Jackson, which is why the Biden and Hart experiences have made them all nervous.

We also have a situation this year where the voters can’t differentiate the candidates in terms of issues. All the Democrats are saying basically the same things about Central America, arms control, taxes and the deficit. Even on foreign trade, the one issue where there has been some semblance of debate, similarities are more striking than differences. In fact, there are more issue differences on the Republican than the Democratic side. No sooner was a pending U.S.-Soviet arms-control agreement announced than GOP candidates fell to squabbling over it.

With no sharp ideological confrontations, personal factors like judgment, character, experience and intelligence take on unusual importance. How else can you tell the difference between, say, Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis and Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.)?

The parties have become more ideologically consistent because of a fundamental change in the political process dating back 20 years. The immediate cause was the bloody 1968 Democratic National Convention. The delegates nominated Hubert H. Humphrey, even though primary voters had gone for Eugene J. McCarthy. As a result, we reformed the political process. We took power from the party bosses and gave it to the people. Henceforth, the decision of the primary voters and caucus participants would be sovereign.

The problem is that most people do not bother to participate in primaries and caucuses. The ones who do tend to be motivated by ideology or special interests. We have ended up with a process that is elitist in a different way. Issue activists and interest groups have replaced bosses and machines. They still enforce a party orthodoxy, however--liberal for the Democrats, conservative for the GOP.

Opening up the process has resulted in another change: It has made the press a player. Under Old Politics rules, candidates were screened by party leaders. Remember the smoke-filled room? That’s where party leaders asked prospective candidates, “Is there anything in your moral, medical, legal or financial background we ought to know about?”

Now that voters pick the candidate, how are they supposed to get information to make an informed decision? From the press. So now we have newspapers sending out questionnaires to the candidates asking them for raw data concerning their moral and medical and legal and financial backgrounds, not to mention their SAT scores and college records. The press is not entirely comfortable with this role. The subject of “how far should the press go” has become this year’s hot topic in political and journalistic circles.

Is it all right to stake out a candidate’s bedroom? To broadcast videotapes of private conversations? What kind of information is relevant to the voters’ decision--and what constitutes an invasion of privacy? The big difference between the Old Politics and the New Politics is that under the old rules, the screening process was essentially private. Now it is public--and highly visible.

The public is not entirely comfortable with the new rules either. Just who is the press responsible to? The press has been quick to pass judgment on candidates, and voters clearly resent it. A poll taken between Biden’s press conference and his withdrawal showed a majority of the voters believed he should continue his campaign. Similar polls over the last few months indicated strong public sentiment that Hart should have stayed in the race.

These results do not mean that people were not bothered by what Hart and Biden did or that they would have voted for them. What they reveal is widespread displeasure that the press seemed to force these candidates out of the race without consulting the voters. The problem is that voters will not have their say until next year. And neither Hart nor Biden felt it was worth staying in the race to find out.

Of course, the press has the power to acquit as well as to convict. It seemed to do that in 1984, when vice presidential nominee Geraldine A. Ferraro got into trouble over her family’s finances. Her press conference was described in one account as “a remarkable tour de force.” Although not all questions were answered and not all issues were resolved, it didn’t matter. “The networks pronounced her innocent,” said a leading Democrat.

Even in the days of smoke-filled rooms, however, it is unlikely that personal qualities mattered quite as much. This is because the President now has a direct, personal relationship with the people. That relationship is his principal source of power. Why? Because political parties are so much weaker than they used to be. Not only do parties have less control over the nominating process, they have less influence over the governing process.

A President relies on his approval rating for power. If his popularity is up, he has clout in Washington. He can get what he wants out of Congress, the bureaucracy and even the press. If the President loses public support, however, his political effectiveness disappears. Members of his own party desert him.

Television has replaced political parties as the intermediary between the people and the President. Which means, for all intents and purposes, that people are unaware of any intermediary at all. They have a personal relationship with their leader. Thus, the ability to win the public’s trust is an essential qualification for the job of President. That ability must be certified in the campaign.

There is another reason why we put presidential candidates through a trial by ordeal. We have to find out everything important about them before they take office, which is to say, before it is too late. Once in office, we can’t get rid of them unless they’re caught with a smoking gun.

That is why Hart’s judgment in a nonpolitical matter--spending a weekend with a young woman--raised questions about his judgment in far more serious matters. As for Biden, people wondered whether the impetuousness and instability of his campaign portended more serious difficulties as a national leader.

Biden may still come out with a moral victory, however. Insiders in Washington last week were estimating that the vote on the Senate Judiciary Committee was going against Robert H. Bork, Reagan’s nominee to the Supreme Court. By the White House’s own count, Bork is three votes shy of a majority in the full Senate. Indeed, there was speculation that if Bork loses the committee vote decisively, the White House may rescind the nomination. The ultimate irony would be if, instead of Bork’s defeat helping Biden’s presidential prospects, Biden’s withdrawal helped turn the tide against the Bork nomination.