GOP Race Still More Beanbag Than Hardball

One thing missing in U.S. campaigns and the reporting of them is a collective institutional memory, and it shows. A lot has been written about the meanness of this year’s Republican presidential contest and, yes, when compared to 1984 and President Reagan’s renomination, it is tougher. That triumphant march had less bumps than a cotillion. But you cannot compare 1984 to any year save 1956 and the renomination of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Compared with past campaigns--remember the 1976 Gerald R. Ford primary ad, “Gov. Reagan cannot start a war, President Reagan can”--the 1988 GOP contest is more beanbag than hardball--let alone dirty pool. What are the allegations? One guy is selectively using the other guy’s voting record or prior statements to gain advantage. So what? That’s par for the course and it adds to the media coverage of the Republican contest--a net plus for the participants and the party.

Some say that such action violates the so-called 11th Commandment, “Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican.” The logic for this dictum is basically don’t get in such a cat fight in the primary that it will be difficult to kiss and make up in time for the general election against the Democrats. Reagan is a strong advocate of the admonition going back to his California days. The commandment bars the low out-of-bounds shot, but fair, clean, even hardball tactics are definitely within bounds.

As to the Bush-Dole flap in and after New Hampshire, the vice president’s people “went negative” because they were, they thought, losing ground rapidly to Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas. They saw that they might lose their large lead--particularly if Dole were allowed to bask in the favorable publicity following his first-place finish in Iowa to their third-place finish. By “negative” they mean ads raising doubts about your opponent as opposed to “positive” ads saying how good your candidate is. Indeed, the so-called negative ads were more comparison ads that raise doubts and tend to make voters return to their first choice (Bush) after checking out the field. Tough ads? Yes. In bounds? Definitely.

Republican primary contestants should fight it out. These contests are not some “going through the chairs” elections at the Rotary Club, after all, and they ready GOP candidates for some of what the Democrats will throw at them in the fall.

There are ads, well in bounds, that the candidates might consider:

For Bush. Dole has held continuous public elective office for 37 years, five-sixths of his adult life. In many ways this is an admirable record, but it has insider written all over it, and looks a lot like many professional Democrats’ records. The vice president stresses his varied experience, including his business experience in the 1950s and the early ‘60s--meeting a payroll and making decisions that affect real people day to day. This seems a “comparative ad” that could help Bush, with a tag line on the Dole record, “Maybe he’s been there so long he’s forgotten why he went there in the first place.”

For Dole. Bush has a problem in saying exactly where his roots are. He was born in Milton, Mass., raised in Greenwich, Conn., prepped in Massachusetts, went to Yale and, after the Navy, moved to Midland and then Houston, Tex. After the 1980 election, he sold his Texas residence and bought his mother’s summer home at Kennebunkport, Me. He lives at the vice president’s mansion in Washington and votes out of a rented hotel suite in Houston. A natural ad would be, “Where Is George Bush From?” perhaps playing on the phrase, “You may be one of us, or one of them, but just who is us ?”

So far, it’s not even hardball. No Barry M. Goldwater-Nelson A. Rockefeller, no Ford-Reagan, not even Richard M. Nixon-George W. Romney--just firm beanbag.