Hart’s ‘New Ideas’ Not So Different Anymore : Rivals Have Adopted, Reshaped His Issues

Gary Hart sought to legitimize his return to the Democratic presidential race by asserting that he was coming back to offer the kind of “new ideas” that his six rivals had failed to provide while he was away.

That did not sit very well with the other Democratic candidates, some of whom quickly pointed out that many of Hart’s ideas are not so new anymore--not very different, in fact, from a wealth of proposals fully explored throughout this year’s campaign.

“I have the power of ideas, and I can govern this country,” Hart said in announcing his Dec. 15 re-entry into the presidential race.

“By adding the issues of economic restructuring, military reform, and enlightened engagement (in foreign policy) to this debate . . . and (by appealing) to voters that may not be affiliated now with any other candidates . . . I only hope to strengthen this party,” he added later on ABC-TV’s “Nightline.”

“That is the beef; that is what my candidacy is all about.”

But while some of Hart’s most interesting ideas and programs may have been novel in 1984, they have now largely become part of the mainstream wisdom in the Democratic Party, and among many of his rivals in the Democratic presidential race of 1987-1988.

“You have to say there has been a substantial convergence around certain ideas, like military reform, that he put forward in 1983 and early 1984,” noted William Galston, issues director for Walter F. Mondale’s 1984 presidential campaign and now a public policy analyst at the Roosevelt Center for American Policy Studies in Washington. “So much of what he has talked about has become part of the conventional parlance in the party.”

Vow Seen Ringing Hollow

So while Hart’s claim that he only wants to raise the level of debate in the Democratic race may have been a convenient excuse for a frustrated man to resurrect his dream of running for President, to his competitors his vow to inject new ideas into the campaign rang a bit hollow.

Indeed, Hart can no longer lay sole claim to the “candidate of ideas” title he coveted so much during his earlier campaigns. During the seven months that Hart was out of the race, a new candidate of ideas clearly emerged in the Democratic field--former Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt.

Now, instead of Hart, it is Babbitt who is winning praise from the nation’s news media and political pundits for offering bold, if sometimes unpopular, “new ideas.” It is Babbitt, for example, who dares to be the only candidate to propose a massive tax hike to reduce the federal deficit.

Standing Still Rock-Bottom

The attention he has gained has yet to be matched by any improvement in his rock-bottom standing in most polls, but even with Hart back in the race, Babbitt continues to get credit for taking the lead on the key economic issues in the campaign, with his call for a huge national sales tax that would raise $40 billion to $50 billion in annual revenues, and equal and simultaneous spending cuts to reduce the deficit.

Although “few of the candidates give much detail on how they plan to make major progress against the deficit . . . Babbitt has given the fullest description,” the Wall Street Journal said last week. “But the bold plan hasn’t done much to raise Mr. Babbitt in the polls,” the paper added in its closely read, front-page column called The Outlook.

The New York Times, in a front-page story the same day, said: “With the exception of Bruce Babbitt . . . the Democrats offer no clear prescriptions for solving the problem” of the federal deficit.

Hart Credits Babbitt

Even Hart gives Babbitt credit for being the only candidate--besides himself--willing to offer a realistic plan to cut the deficit.

“On this (the deficit), I will side with Gov. Babbitt, who has had the courage to say that we can’t achieve what most Americans want, and that’s reduced deficits without increased revenues,” Hart said on “Nightline.”

But Hart actually offers a far more cautious approach to the budget deficit than Babbitt, even while he criticizes the other candidates for their failure to follow Babbitt’s leadership on the issue. When he re-entered the campaign, he called for an oil-import fee and excise taxes on luxury items, modest revenue-raising proposals that have already gained strong support among many of the other Democratic candidates.

So it was no accident that Babbitt was among the most outraged candidates when Hart said he was returning to the race to fill the vacuum of ideas.

‘A Tone of Arrogance’

“If Mr. Hart thinks he owns the franchise on new ideas in America, he’s wrong. If he thinks the American people or the other candidates are waiting to be educated by him, he’s kidding himself,” Babbitt said. “There is, to put it bluntly, a disturbing tone of arrogance in Gary Hart’s rationale for re-entering the race. He says he got out because of the failures of the media, and that he’s getting back in because of the failures of the other candidates. Well, he’s dead wrong on both counts.”

Babbitt added that, if Hart really hopes to present himself as an issue-oriented candidate, he will have to offer a more comprehensive budget package. “The acid test for Gary Hart is whether he stands up for the truth about the federal budget deficit,” said Babbitt. The issue of the deficit, Babbitt added, “has rightly become a proxy for the honesty and courage of our candidates for President. Every candidate knows it, no other candidate admits it and that includes Gary Hart, both before and since his withdrawal from the race seven months ago.”

Of course, the Babbitt camp was not the only one to attack Hart and harshly question his assertion that he came back because the issues were not being addressed.

Viewed as a Cover Story

“His claim is simply a cover story to give him a reason for re-entering the race,” said Terry Michael, a spokesman for Illinois Sen. Paul Simon. “The issues really have little to do with why he has gotten back in. In fact, this has been one of the most issue-laden primary races ever. There have never been so many issue forums and debates so early in the process, and many of them have been about the very issues Gary Hart talked about in his re-entry announcement.

“The only issue that has been missing for the last six months has been Gary Hart.”

Since returning to the race, Hart has focused heavily on military reform and the need to improve conventional defenses in Europe and elsewhere. But both Babbitt and Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis have already called for a “conventional defense initiative” that would upgrade American conventional forces in Europe to reduce the West’s reliance upon a nuclear deterrent.

Hart also has called for an “economic restructuring,” a kind of industrial policy designed to target investment in certain sectors of the economy, while also providing worker retraining and education programs. But Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt and Simon, among others, have already proposed spending billions on similar forms of industrial retraining.

And Babbitt has offered a novel “workplace democracy” agenda that would, among other things, increase employee ownership of corporations--thus providing, in theory, a greater incentive for improved productivity--by creating tax-deferred stock ownership accounts, similar to IRAs, for employee stock holdings.

At the same time, Hart has made little change in the open-market approach to trade that he espoused in 1984, in spite of the nation’s mounting trade deficit.

In foreign affairs, where Hart supports what he calls a policy of “enlightened engagement”--an attempt to fashion a humane compromise between the noninterventionism of the Democratic Party’s left wing and the hawkish internationalism of the Reagan Administration--Hart has presented a more systematic world view than have the other candidates. But on specific foreign policy issues--Nicaragua, South Africa, arms control with the Soviet Union--his positions seem similar to those of many of his rivals.

Hostility to Hart

While reacting with hostility to Hart’s re-entry into the campaign, Babbitt and other candidates acknowledge that back in 1984, Hart did provide leadership on the issues, especially on his most cherished subject, military reform. In fact, some other campaigns now grumble that some of Babbitt’s ideas are simply old Hart proposals in new wrapping. “On military reform, Babbitt would freely acknowledge some debt to Gary Hart,” said Bart Gellman, issues director for the Babbitt campaign.

Focus on ‘Children’s Issue’

But regardless of who came up with the ideas in the first place, Babbitt has played a large role in shaping the Democratic Party debate by embracing many of the 1988 campaign’s most talked-about issues. For instance, Babbitt was the first Democrat in the campaign to focus attention on a group of youth and family related problems that have collectively become known as the “children’s issue.”

Among other things, he has proposed a government day-care voucher plan, which would give money to working parents below certain income levels to pay for the day-care system of their choice. He has also called for an expanded Medicaid system to provide health care for all poor children, minimum legal guarantees for parental leaves for childbirth or childhood illness and greater federal involvement in improving early public education.

Two of Hottest Issues

After Babbitt started talking about such proposals, Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has since dropped out of the race, Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Jr. and Gephardt all picked up on similar children’s themes. Now, education and day care have become two of the hottest issues in the Democratic presidential campaign, especially in Iowa.

Increasingly, many of Babbitt’s rivals credit him when they adopt similar ideas on the stump. Simon, for instance, has lauded Babbitt for being the first candidate to make U.S.-Mexican relations a major issue. In fact, throughout the early stages of the campaign, Babbitt has repeatedly warned that it is folly for the Reagan Administration to ignore Mexico’s crushing problems while obsessively focusing Latin American policy on tiny Nicaragua. Now, in virtually every campaign stop he makes in Iowa, Simon uses the same theme as a new way to explain why he opposes aid to the Nicaraguan Contras.

Obviously, the main reason his rivals feel free to give credit to Babbitt is that, unlike Hart, he is not perceived as much of a threat.

Iowa Called Critical

With good reason. Despite the fact that Babbitt began campaigning in Iowa a year and a half ago--long before most of the front-runners here--Babbitt remains mired at the bottom of the polls in the state. And, since he has spent far more time and money in Iowa than anywhere else, his staffers acknowledge that his performance in the Feb. 8 Iowa caucuses will almost certainly determine the fate of his faltering campaign.

Theories abound as to why Babbitt has not caught on, but the principal criticisms have focused on his inability to perform well on television and a tendency to come across as a dry technocrat that have made it hard for him to connect personally with rural Midwesterners.

But one thing seems clear--his basketful of novel ideas has not yet translated into a basketful of votes.

The implications of this for Hart are far from clear. Can Hart, with his better-known face, populist campaign strategy and widely publicized personal life, get any further with ideas similar to the ones Babbitt is pushing with so little success?

Those participating in the Iowa caucuses and those voters in the New Hampshire primary will give the first significant judgment, and the likelihood is that they will look beyond the ideas to the candidate himself.

“People want more than just a bunch of ideas, solutions to every problem,” observed Pat Mitchell, Simon’s Iowa campaign coordinator.

“They will say, those ideas are fine, but what are you like? How are you going to perform?”