N.H. May Have Limited Impact for Democrats

When New Hampshire Democrats repudiated front-runner Walter F. Mondale in their 1984 presidential primary, they turned their backs on their party’s political past.

But four years later, with the 1988 Democratic primary in this state on Tuesday, the campaign has yet to offer local voters a clear view of the party’s future.

It’s not that there aren’t sharp and meaningful differences of policy and personality between this year’s front-runner, Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, and his chief adversary, Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt, winner of last week’s Iowa caucuses.

Negative Commercials

The trouble is that any debate over these distinctions has been drowned out by a cacophony of negative TV commercials and stump speech attacks--much as the pavements here were buried under a foot of snow last week.

Another factor distorting the national political realities in the nation’s first presidential primary is the immense artificial advantage enjoyed by Dukakis as the chief executive of neighboring Massachusetts.

“Eight years of preparation is better than eight months,” said public policy professor Gary Orren of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, comparing the period Dukakis has spent as governor with the time his rivals have had to campaign in New Hampshire.

Enhancing Dukakis’ role as regional favorite son is the coverage he receives in the Boston media, which dominate much of New Hampshire, a treatment critics complain is so respectful that it borders on the reverential.

“The Boston media treat politics like a sporting event,” said Ed Reilly, pollster for the Gephardt campaign, and himself a Boston native. And in this particular political contest, Reilly grumbled, Dukakis is accorded the role of the beloved hometown Celtics, while his rivals are treated like visiting foes.

For these and other reasons the New Hampshire primary does not seem likely to be the defining event it was in the 1984 Democratic campaign, when Gary Hart’s defeat of Mondale changed the shape of the campaign and ultimately forced the party to seek new directions.

Nevertheless, the results Tuesday are still apt to make or break some political destinies. Moreover, a look at the conduct of the campaign provides a revealing glimpse of the forces at work in the national competition, which eventually will determine the identity of the party’s standard-bearer.

Significantly, at the center of the controversy here is not front-runner Dukakis but the apparent runner-up, Gephardt. And the reason appears to be that in the view of a number of independent analysts, including some Republicans, he has the most direct and compelling message of any of the Democrats, a message his rivals contend is deceptive and disingenuous.

Attack the Messenger

Seeing themselves threatened by the message, Gephardt’s foes have generally attacked the messenger as lacking in sincerity and genuineness of purpose.

Ever since Gephardt arrived here last Tuesday from Iowa, he has been the target of commercials sponsored by Illinois Sen. Paul Simon, charging inconsistencies between Gephardt’s rhetoric as a candidate and his record as a lawmaker. Simon, who finished second to Gephardt in Iowa and then fell behind him in polls here in New Hampshire, is hoping through these ads to overtake Gephardt and keep his own candidacy alive in subsequent contests.

And then Saturday, at the final televised debate before the Tuesday vote, Gephardt found himself the prime target of not only Simon, but also of nearly every other Democratic candidate--Dukakis, former Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt and Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Jr.

Gephardt’s aides preferred to look at the positive side of their predicament. Coming under fire like this “sends a message as to where the ideas are coming from,” said pollster Reilly. “Gephardt is the one who is setting the agenda” of the New Hampshire debate.

Advance Has Stalled

But even Reilly acknowledged that “it is very difficult frankly to run a positive campaign when you’re being attacked like this.” And indeed the tracking polls, the daily phone canvassing of voter sentiment here, suggest that the attacks have stalled Gephardt’s advance after the initial boost he got from his Iowa triumph.

But Gephardt left himself wide open for the indictment of inconsistency that Simon and others have brought against him.

What he did in effect was to reinvent himself as a politician once he became a presidential candidate. Suddenly, under the guidance of two former aides of Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy--campaign manager William Carrick and speech writer Robert Shrum--he was spouting liberal populist rhetoric. It was not the sort of talk that had been heard very often from the Richard Gephardt who chaired the House Democratic Caucus and was considered a skilled practitioner of legislative corner cutting and bargain making in the House cloakrooms.

In a speech a week before the Iowa caucus vote that anticipated his victory in that state and sought to establish the agenda for the rest of the campaign, Gephardt recalled Franklin D. Roosevelt’s words on being renominated for a second term in 1936.

“I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it, the forces of greed and privilege met their match. And I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it, they met their master.”

Stirs Harsh Criticism

Said Gephardt: “That is the fight I am trying to make--and I hope you will decide it is your fight too.” This sort of impassioned appeal to the less advantaged in the nation, combined with the powerful emotional message of a tougher trade policy, has given Gephardt the political profile that causes concern among potential Republican opponents and stirs harsh criticism from his Democratic rivals, determined to squelch his candidacy before it takes off on full national flight.

“He’s head and shoulders above the rest of the Democratic candidates,” said David Keene, senior consultant to Kansas Sen. Bob Dole, who appears close to his second consecutive victory over Vice President George Bush in the Republican primary here in New Hampshire.

And a recent Gallup poll conducted for Times Mirror Co. suggested that Gephardt had strong appeal to what the poll termed “the largest constituency in the Democratic Party”--older voters whose allegiance to the Democrats is based on their admiration for Roosevelt, the same President Gephardt quoted so fervently.

Gephardt’s ability to espouse liberal economic policies and at the same time present a ripened Huckleberry Finn image makes him a particularly formidable figure in the South among the white voters who will decide the fate of the Democratic candidate competing against black leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson in the March 8 Super Tuesday primary.

‘Two-Man Race’

All of these attributes were well known to Dukakis’ strategists and enough to cause them some concern when Gephardt won in Iowa. Charlie Baker, Dukakis’ chief operator in New Hampshire, began talking about New Hampshire becoming “a two-man race” and Dukakis started taking potshots at Gephardt’s trade proposals, calling them protectionist and representative of 19th-Century thinking.

But Dukakis’ strategists soon found comfort in the treatment they received in the Boston media. On Wednesday for example, a Boston Globe headline labeled his third-place finish in Iowa as “A Boost for Dukakis Camp.”

Meanwhile, Simon entered aggressively into the fray. With his candidacy facing extinction, Simon borrowed all he could get and put it all into one of the most single-minded television campaigns seen in recent presidential politics. The ads attacked Gephardt for a series of “flip-flops” on a host of issues--the MX missile, the B-1 bomber, cost-of-living increases for Social Security beneficiaries and nuclear waste dumps.

In each case Gephardt had an explanation, and he also argued that changing positions was a sign of growth and flexibility.

Nevertheless, the evidence from the polls was that these charges were coloring the impression of Gephardt by voters who scarcely knew him before the Iowa vote and had little chance to get to know him any better since.

Dukakis’ advisers evidently concluded that their candidate could resume the cautious stance that has been natural to him since he was stunned by his defeat in his first attempt to seek a second term as governor in 1978.

Rose Garden Campaign

Dukakis has conducted what could be called a Rose Garden campaign, as if he were a presidential incumbent, posing in front of snowbanks, shaking hands with friendly citizens and returning almost daily to look after the business of the state of Massachusetts in nearby Boston.

His aide Baker explained why the candidate did not need to do more. “It isn’t as if people don’t like him,” Baker said. “People feel safe in trusting the country’s future to him. He has integrity, a sense of values and he has shown he is effective and creative as an executive.”

But what is lacking from this mix, his rivals complained, was anything much in the way of bold new ideas. But Dukakis supporters said these would come in time, and meanwhile they pointed out the governor was holding on to his support--though not expanding it--and running more than 2 to 1 ahead of Gephardt and Simon, whom the polls showed to be closely bunched the weekend before the vote.

When he encountered Simon and Gephardt at a state party dinner last week, Dukakis reportedly asked, with gentle mockery: “You guys getting along? Anything I can do to help?”

Simon, for his part, seemed content to focus his efforts on attacking Gephardt, though his aides contended that he had developed a strong positive rapport with New Hampshire voters before the Iowa caucus returns came in. He had been well ahead of Gephardt in most surveys.

But just as Dukakis’ candidacy rested heavily on his performance as governor, Simon’s seemed to be based mainly on his personal qualities. “He has developed a trust relationship with the voters as a man you can believe in,” said his press secretary, Terry Michael. “It’s the biography of Simon that we are doing quite well with,” Michael said, though he added that Simon’s personal appeal derived in part from traditional liberal positions he has taken on such issues as jobs, long-term health care and education.

Others Stand to Gain

Although Dukakis, Gephardt and Simon are the stars of New Hampshire’s Democratic drama, there are other actors who stand to gain.

One is Sen. Gore, who passed up Iowa and hardly campaigned in New Hampshire at all during the last critical week before the vote, betting instead that he could emerge in the Democratic race on Super Tuesday in his native South.

Most analysts view Gephardt as Gore’s strongest potential rival for white Southern support in the South. But if Gephardt finishes a weak second here, or perhaps third behind Simon, then it will be difficult for him to rally his backers in the South. That will leave Gore to contend for white votes mainly against Dukakis, whom Gore’s advisers consider too liberal for Southern states. And that would mean Gore’s gamble in dropping out of Iowa and de-emphasizing New Hampshire will have paid off.

In any event, Gore will not be directly damaged by the results here. “I don’t think the stakes are high for us,” said Fred Martin, Gore’s campaign manager.

Minimal Expectations

A candidate with even less to lose on Tuesday is Jackson. Because New Hampshire’s black population is minuscule, expectations for Jackson’s performance are minimal. A Jackson showing here close to his 11% in Iowa will be counted as a plus for him. “The message we want to get out of New Hampshire is Jesse Jackson wins votes, without any qualifying phrase, like ‘mostly from blacks,’ ” said his state campaign manager, Steven Cancian.

The two Democratic contenders who have everything to lose here are Hart and Babbitt. Most observers believe that after his last-place finish in Iowa, Hart’s second candidacy of the 1988 campaign is hanging by a thread and he badly needs a boost here, particularly because this was the state that launched him into prominence in the 1984 campaign.

As for Babbitt, who finished fifth in Iowa, ahead only of Hart and Gore, his campaign chairwoman in the state, Susan Calegari, talked optimistically about a third-place finish. But that would be difficult to achieve and anything lower than that may not be enough for him to survive.

Babbitt described his situation with characteristic candor in last week’s debate: “New Hampshire has within its grasp the power of life and death over my candidacy.”