Race Starts Over for Second Time : Woes of Candidates Give Three Democrats an Edge

WASHINGTON —  For the second time this year, the race for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination is starting over.

Just as the forced withdrawal of erstwhile front-runner Gary Hart last May shook up the overall campaign, so the recent combined misfortunes of Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis have shattered prior assumptions and created new opportunities.

Not all of the dust has settled yet from the storm created by Biden’s departure from the competition and the subsequent wounding revelation that Dukakis’ campaign had helped to precipitate Biden’s downfall.

But at this early stage, the three remaining contenders who seem to have the best opportunity to take advantage of the changed situation are Illinois Sen. Paul Simon on the left, Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt in the center and Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Jr. on the right.

Two of their three competitors--the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Dukakis--are still very much in the race. Dukakis is the runaway leader in contributions with about $8 million so far, and Jackson still leads in many polls. The sixth candidate, former Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt, is hoping for an upset in the Iowa caucuses that could propel him into a front-running role.

But the new environment of the Democratic race has not changed the fortunes of Jackson and Babbitt, and it has hurt Dukakis. Jackson, despite major efforts to broaden his appeal, has yet to show that he can gain substantial support outside the black community. And Babbitt is handicapped by difficulty in raising funds and inconsistent performance in the television debates.

Meanwhile, Simon, Gephardt and Gore, reading roughly from left to right, have begun to show strengths within the party’s ideological spectrums that offer them chances for growth.

Those ideological placements are at best crude approximations. The clearest lesson from the first months of the Democratic presidential campaign is that distinctions between the candidates have less to do with policy and programs than with tone, style and what has come to be the dominant buzzword of the 1988 contest--character.

To many Democrats, notably the last one to win the White House, Jimmy Carter, the current emphasis on such qualities as trust and integrity is reminiscent of the post-Watergate environment that Carter masterfully exploited by promising the electorate: “I’ll never lie to you.”

“Carter said the mood now is like the mood when he ran in 1976,” said Simon’s campaign manager, Brian Lunde, who met with the former President at his Plains, Ga., home last week.

“The words ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ don’t mean much right now,” said Emilie Holroyd, a Democratic national committeewoman from West Virginia, after listening to all six remaining candidates debate at a national committee forum in Washington.

Although Gore and Simon are considered to be at the opposite edges of the party’s ideological spectrum, Holroyd said they both have strong support among West Virginia activists, for reasons that have little to do with ideology.

“When they talk,” she explained, “you believe they know what they are talking about and they believe what they are saying.”

Disillusioning Disclosures

The stress on such character traits as sincerity can be traced to a series of disillusioning disclosures transcending party lines, beginning with last winter’s revelations of the Iran- contra scandal. Then early in the Democratic campaign came evidence of Hart’s apparent involvement with a young model, which crippled his candidacy.

The most recent traumas--the acknowledged plagiarism and misrepresentation by Biden coupled with the fact that Dukakis’ campaign manager, John Sasso, had triggered the damaging revelations by supplying videotaped evidence to journalists--has had a twofold impact on the Democratic campaign.

In the first place, those combined events reinforce the emphasis on personality traits rather than policy distinctions, thus blurring the outlines of the race.

For example, though Gore has labored in recent campaign debates to depict himself as tougher on foreign policy and national security issues, his campaign manager, Fred Martin, said the character traits implied by Gore’s arguments may be at least as important as the policies themselves.

‘Personal Qualities’

“One effect of what Gore is doing is to demonstrate personal qualities--independence, forthrightness and doggedness in the face of adversity,” Martin said.

More directly, not only was Biden forced out of the race but Dukakis no longer appears to be the strongest campaigner. That means all of the contenders lost a reference point against which they could measure their own candidacies.

“Now there is no front-runner,” said Gephardt’s campaign manger, William Carrick, whose strategic blueprint had contemplated Dukakis in the lead with Gephardt, his chief challenger, eventually overtaking him in the Southern Super Tuesday primaries on March 8.

Chief Adversary in Iowa

In the new environment, Carrick now views Simon as Gephardt’s chief adversary in Iowa, where the Democratic nominating process begins next February and where Gephardt’s forces have long claimed an organizational advantage. As for the Super Tuesday competition in the South, the question is whether Gore can make himself a major factor.

Here is a brief look at the prospects of Simon, Gephardt and Gore:

--Simon. The senator’s main advantage in the current political climate is that he was perhaps the first in the race to stress character, emphasizing his sincerity and genuineness, well before the importance of these concerns was widely perceived.

“If this election campaign never gets off the examination of character, he has 30 years of public life that can stand every test of honesty and truthfulness,” said campaign manager Lunde.

More Substantive Issues

To the extent that more substantive issues take on importance, Simon can rely on what he likes to describe as traditional Democratic beliefs, with the word “traditional” apparently serving as a euphemism for “liberal.” Lunde describes it as “a willingness to use the tools of government to solve problems.”

One potential problem for Simon is that his careful cultivation of sincerity may come to seem sanctimonious and thus tiresome. Another is that liberals may object to parts of his record, which includes advocacy of a constitutional amendment to balance the budget.

--Gephardt. The Missouri congressman’s strengths continue to be an apparently inexhaustible commitment to campaigning, identification with a tough stand on trade and a flock of supporters among his House colleagues who have helped give his campaign credibility around the country. The endorsement last week of San Francisco fund-raiser Walter H. Shorenstein should give a much-needed boost to his finances.

Gephardt has worked hard to position himself in the middle. On foreign policy, for example, he differs from Gore by opposing aid to the contras and missile test flights, yet differs from Dukakis by supporting development of the mobile Midgetman missile.

Need for Aggressiveness

Perhaps Gephardt’s biggest problem is an intangible--his inability so far to develop any sense of excitement about his candidacy. Some analysts think he needs to show more aggressiveness and imagination. As one aide acknowledged: “He has to start taking charge of these debates.”

--Gore. The Tennessee senator is the only white Southerner in the race. That fact may be his biggest potential asset, and Gore seems determined to make the most of that potential by appealing to presumed deeply held support of a strong defense in the South. Disavowing such blatant regionalism, campaign manager Martin said Gore is just expressing strong convictions that are shared by Democrats in the North as well as the South.

Another potential asset for Gore is his youth. At 39 he is the youngest of the Democratic candidates, and in a field not noted for glamour, his boyish energy and good looks may count for something positive.

The obvious drawback to Gore’s stress on a hard-line defense policy is that it may cost him any chance of winning support among Northern liberals. He may overcome that problem if he can supplement his positions on defense with a package of imaginative domestic policy proposals to appeal to liberals.

Self-Inflicted Wound

Hanging over the future of the Democratic contest is the question of Dukakis’ ability to recover from his self-inflicted wound.

At a debate last week in Miami sponsored by the Democratic Leadership Council, a group of moderate to conservative party leaders, the normally self-assured Dukakis seemed subdued and reticent. Unable to say flatly what he thought about the 1983 Grenada invasion, he allowed himself to be bullyragged on that point by Gore.

Later in the week Dukakis sought to rally his staff and his own spirits. He named a new campaign manager, Susan Estrich, ordered his aides to take at least one day off each week, “so as not to lose perspective,” said press secretary Patricia O’Brien, and ordered chocolate chunk ice cream all around.

“Morale is up,” O’Brien maintained afterward.

But many former Biden supporters were still unforgiving of the damage done to their candidate.

“I think he (Dukakis) is hurt and the party is badly hurt,” said Patricia Russell, New Hampshire member of the Democratic National Committee and an early Biden supporter. “When you have one candidate doing in another, that’s not the way you play the game.”

In the long run, though, most agreed that the fate of Dukakis’ candidacy depends more on the reaction of the candidate himself than on any one else. And in view of his previous long and close reliance on the political experience of his recently resigned campaign manager, Sasso, it is clear Dukakis faces a severe challenge in adjusting.

Said a strategist for a rival candidate who had worked closely with Dukakis in the 1984 Walter F. Mondale campaign: “He is in an environment he doesn’t fully understand and his guidance system just went out.”