New Ideas Will Never Nominate the Next U.S. President

The 1987 presidential campaign is over. And the winner is: George Bush. How did Bush do it? By following the Abbe Sieyes strategy. When asked what he had done during the French Revolution, the French prelate replied, “I survived.”

Bush survived by following one of the oldest rules in politics: Stay away from big ideas. They only get you into trouble. During 1987, a certain correlation became noticeable in both parties. The candidates who gained the most--Bush, Senate Republican leader Bob Dole of Kansas, former Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis--were selling competence and professionalism. The candidates selling ideas--Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.), former Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt, former Delaware Gov. Pierre S. (Pete) du Pont IV--stayed at the back. Two Democrats who started experimenting with big ideas--Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri and Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois--ended up getting burned.

But didn’t Ronald Reagan win the 1980 election because he was the candidate with big ideas? Not exactly. Reagan almost lost the 1980 election because he had so many big ideas. He made voters nervous with his talk about rolling back big government and standing tall in foreign affairs. People were afraid he would start a war and throw old people out into the snow.

Reagan was elected in spite of, not because of, big ideas; after Jimmy Carter, voters wanted change. Only after Reagan’s reassuring debate performance--”Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”--did people feel he was a safe choice. He won with a bare majority--50.7%.

Sometime during the past year, Vice President Bush discovered he didn’t need big ideas to win the GOP nomination. His strong suit is loyalty to Reagan and he is playing that for all it’s worth. Among Republicans, it is worth a great deal. The press, of course, complained that Bush could not claim to be “his own man.”

So Bush made a few comments about being “the best President for education this country has ever seen” to show he had his own agenda. He “broke with Reagan” by opposing tax increases in the recent deficit-reduction compromise. Neither issue gives Republicans any problems. No one asks Bush how he intends to pay for his education program; Democrats are the only ones who have to explain how they intend to pay for things. And as for breaking with Reagan by pledging, “No new taxes, period,” that’s like being more Catholic than the Pope.

Right now, only two people can take the Republican nomination away from Bush. One is Reagan. The President has shown no inclination to be critical of Bush, however. The other is Bush. That is a bigger problem. Bush has a tendency to do foolish things. After the Iran-Contra hearings, Bush bragged that he had not been implicated because he was “outside the loop.” On his recent trip to Europe, he made some unwise comments about the relative skills of U.S. and Soviet workers. And when he lost a straw poll in Iowa, he explained that supporters must have been “at their daughters’ coming-out parties, or teeing up at the golf course.”

None of these gaffes was serious enough to deny Bush the nomination. Basically, the Republican campaign consists of a bunch of candidates waiting for Bush to say something really stupid. But so far Bush has used each debate to make the point that “loyalty is not a character flaw.” He is then declared the winner.

Bush’s chief competitor for the GOP nomination, Dole, seems embarrassed by ideas. Dole seems interested in issues only for their strategic value. His handling of the current arms-control treaty is a good example. First Dole reserved judgment as a signal to conservative critics that he was no knee-jerk Reagan loyalist (like you-know-who). Then, discovering that the treaty had immense support among Republican faithful, Dole appeared at Reagan’s side to announce that he would lead the fight for ratification. None of this was exactly a bold display of conviction.

Dole’s message to Republicans is that he takes the deficit seriously and is willing to preside over a regime of austerity to cut it. Traditional Republicans don’t mind that. They have been taking the deficit seriously and calling for austerity for more than 50 years, even when there was no deficit. Dole has a different message for Democrats when he says the GOP has to become the party of compassion, reaching out to the disadvantaged and disabled. Since he is not a Democrat, no one asks him how he intends to pay for this.

If you are looking for Republican ideas, try Marion G. (Pat) Robertson, Kemp or Du Pont. They have so many ideas they make Republicans nervous. Robertson was the biggest surprise. Every time he announced he would do something--like raise more money than other candidates or win the Michigan caucuses--he went out and did it. Now he says he can get 35,000 supporters to the Iowa caucuses. That could make him the winner. Regular Republicans see the Robertson onslaught as an invasion from Mars. Bush can use the Robertson threat to convince his supporters that they must come out and vote for him.

Kemp was the biggest disappointment of 1987. His campaign of ideas has been a flop. Traditional Republicans are in a defensive mood, while Kemp preaches an aggressive program to extend the Reagan Revolution. Kemp’s supply-side economics, including the idea that the nation can “grow out of the deficit,” sounds like exactly what got the Reagan Administration in trouble in the first place. Among conservatives who feel betrayed by Reagan, Kemp’s optimism falls flat. Conservatives want recriminations. Kemp gives them justifications.

Du Pont’s libertarian ideas about restructuring welfare, social security and the farm program are even woollier than Kemp’s. Du Pont and Alexander M. Haig Jr. attack Bush most vigorously. Du Pont challenged Bush to come up with new ideas, while Haig criticized his role in the Iran-Contra affair--”Were you in the cockpit or in an economy ride in the back of the plane?” This offended many, but what did Du Pont and Haig have to lose? Candidates like Kemp, Du Pont and Haig have to say bold and unconventional things to get press attention. When they get that attention, it only adds to their images of being risky and unelectable.

This year started out with Gary Hart as the Democratic front-runner. At the end of the year, Hart is still the front-runner. In between, he managed to disgrace himself and ruin his chances to win the presidency. The only problem is he is still in the race.

Hart says he is running because his ideas about “strategic investment economics, military reform and enlightened engagement” were not being put forward by other candidates. They took offense, arguing that those things were exactly what they had been talking about. But nobody was listening. Voters do listen to Hart, but not for what he says about strategic investment, military reform and enlightened engagement.

Hart could either be a problem or solution for the Democrats. He will be a problem if he wins the New Hampshire primary. Then the Democrats will have an unelectable front-runner with populist appeal to anti-Establishment and anti-press resentments. Hart will be a solution if he remains credible but someone else wins New Hampshire. Then the winner will have a significant victory, and Democrats a plausible front-runner. Without Hart, for instance, a Dukakis victory in New Hampshire would have meant little. He is “expected” to win that primary as a favorite son. But beating Hart there could give Dukakis--and the Democrats--credibility and momentum.

Dukakis’ ideas are much like Hart’s--schemes, not visions. What both candidates sell is pragmatism, the idea of approaching issues as problems to be solved (“How do we stimulate economic growth?”) rather than interests to be served (“What are we going to do for the disadvantaged?”). The Democratic Party has become so encumbered by organized interests--labor, blacks, women--that a pragmatic approach sounds like a bold new idea.

In 1984, critics accused Hart of running a campaign based on the idea of new ideas. No one knew what his new ideas were--hence, “Where’s the beef?”--but everybody was familiar with the old idea he was running against: big government. Big government is still the only thing that passes for a vision in the Democratic Party. To Republicans, big government means taxing, spending and inflation. To Democrats, it means protecting people against adversity. Democrats associate government with compassion and mutuality. That is why many Democrats find the pragmatism of Hart or Dukakis so lacking in “vision.” Dukakis, it should be noted, recently hired a “vision doctor.”

Simon tried to fill the vision gap by reminding Democrats of their commitment to help the poor and disadvantaged. Critics immediately demanded to know how he expected to pay. Simon’s answer, more or less, was “trust me.” Gephardt responded: “Simonomics is really Reaganomics with a bow tie.”

Ideas have also gotten Gephardt into trouble. He seems to change his ideas with alarming frequency on issues like abortion and taxes. The idea that got his campaign off the ground earlier this year, protectionism, has been widely criticized within the party. Since the Oct. 19 stock market crash, protectionism has seemed ever more risky. The experience of the 1930s leads many Americans, including Reagan, to associate trade wars with recessions.

No one can fault Jesse Jackson and Babbitt for not having ideas. They have too many and their ideas get them into trouble. Like Hart, Jackson and Babbitt do not have much money and must rely on “free media”--i.e., news coverage--to move their messages. To be newsworthy, they have to be interesting. To be interesting, they have to be bold and unconventional. And that makes them seem risky and unelectable. Candidates who run on ideas, like Jackson and Babbitt on the Democratic side and Kemp and Du Pont in the GOP, are admired for their honesty and forthrightness. But they don’t get far.

Ideas are rarely at the center of presidential campaigns. Next year should be no different. Ideas are risky, and in a close election, no one wants to take risks. Instead of a contest between old ideas and new ideas, 1988 is likely to offer voters a choice between old ideas (the Republicans) and older ideas (the Democrats).