Bashing Toyotas, Taiwan, Tycoons, Gephardt Tugs at the Blue Collars

In the crucial days leading up to the March 8 Super Tuesday, the Democratic race may turn on whether the remaining candidates can drive a wedge between Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri and his powerful populist message of blue-collar economic discontent.

“If Gephardt gets through Super Tuesday in good shape, he then goes into a series of states, with the exception of California and New York, in which his message has some real power,” said a senior adviser to another Democratic contender. “I almost think the hourglass is running out right now on whether one of these candidates can stop Gephardt.”

Gephardt threatens the other Democrats because he is on the verge of solving the fundamental balancing act of any campaign. In large part, the Democratic race has remained unsettled through the early contests because none of the campaigns have joined a compelling message to a convincing messenger. Former Arizona Gov. Bruce E. Babbitt developed an ambitious, even visionary, message but was an unacceptable messenger. Similarly, the carefully crafted complexities, intricate architecture and bold departures of Gary Hart’s new ideas weren’t able to revive his candidacy once he squandered his personal credibility.

Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis has the opposite problem. Telegenic, firm, grounded and uncomplicated, he has real strength as a messenger. His campaign has been hamstrung only because he appears to have alarmingly little to say. Sen. Albert Gore Jr. of Tennessee has tried to substitute youth and an intermittent Southern accent for a national appeal.

Now Gephardt has begun to assemble both pieces of the equation, the first Democrat to do so. Though blessed with nothing that could be confused for charisma, Gephardt has developed a mad-as-hell style that serves his purposes. Yet his message--anti-Establishment, anti-import, anti-corporate economic nationalism--has ignited his campaign. “He has basically done a better job at giving a cogent argument as to why he should be President than the other candidates,” said Ed Reilly, his pollster.

That argument crystallized slowly. Gephardt’s broadsides against Japan immediately found an audience in voters who viewed Sony or Toyota as threats to American jobs. But Gephardt didn’t really lift off until he closed the circle with a denunciation of powerful domestic economic interests--big companies, Wall Street, the press, all the pillars of the Establishment.

Gephardt borrowed that missing piece from Jesse Jackson, who had been stitching his own populist appeal since 1984. In the initial Democratic debate last summer, while Gephardt focused fire on foreigners, Jackson scored a bull’s-eye with Iowa voters by blaming disappearing jobs on General Motors and General Electric instead of Korea and Taiwan.

Clearly, Jackson had a powerful message. But there were problems with him as a messenger. While he has made inroads among white liberals, many white middle-class voters--even those who share an antipathy for the entrenched powers atop the economic pyramid--can’t yet imagine a black President.

That left an opening for a different messenger carrying the Jackson message; Gephardt and his advisers were the first to fill it. Advertisements powered by the combustible mix of populist corporate-bashing and almost nativist foreign-bashing revived Gephardt’s moribund Iowa campaign. Jackson could only complain that Gephardt was stealing his lines.

Gephardt’s emergence as a populist hurt Jackson, but it fatally squeezed Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois. Simon had hoped to fill that role in the campaign but all he offered was a grainy, empathetic populism, minus the sharp colors that lit up Gephardt’s advertising. Instead, Simon’s folksy demeanor and appearance merged with his enunciation of traditional Democratic virtues to anoint him as the ambassador of the past. Simon matched message and messenger--but only as the incarnation of bygone liberal glory days. That wasn’t enough.

Much like Simon before him, Gore now finds himself squeezed by Gephardt’s new image. In the first two contests, Gephardt scored most heavily with blue-collar voters; the track record of such Southern populists as George Wallace and Huey Long suggest his appeal will connect below the Mason-Dixon line as well. If it does, Gore can cash in his frequent-flyer miles. His campaign will have great trouble surviving if he cannot reclaim Southern blue-collar and middle-income whites from Gephardt.

Gore has always been an uncertain messenger for those disgruntled voters. A senator’s son, Gore seems more comfortable in Georgetown than Georgia, more buttoned-down than down-home. His message is not precisely focused on that audience either. While Gore understands that Southerners are looking for a President who will stand up for America, he has sought to convey toughness solely in military terms. Hawkishness won’t hurt him in the South (though his fundamentally liberal voting record on national security strains his credibility as the bearer of that message) but it doesn’t address economic concerns at the root of the region’s fear of U.S. decline.

In the South as elsewhere, economic--not military--fears cut most sharply now. As tensions with the Soviets diminish, and fear of foreign economic competitors mounts, voters are increasingly measuring national strength by economic performance, looking for a President who will keep America secure in those terms. The candidate who grasped that insight most clearly is Gephardt; his jingoistic economics allows him to talk tough while opposing the Strategic Defense Initiative, the MX missile and aid to the Nicaragua Contras.

So, like Simon before him, Gore has concluded that he must decertify Gephardt as a messenger since he can’t undermine the message. Gore has plenty of material to muster. For all Gephardt’s anti-corporate rhetoric, there is nothing inherently anti-corporate about his trade bill: Last year, during House consideration of the measure, his office released a list of major companies that supported it, and all Gephardt’s Establishment-bashing hasn’t discouraged political action committees--the checkbooks of the Washington Establishment--from contributing more than $360,000 to his campaign. That’s twice as much as they’ve given to any other Democrat.

But Gore’s own flaws as a messenger--his reputation as a sort of ersatz Southerner--diminish his ability to portray Gephardt as a political chameleon.

Gephardt would be more likely to feel the heat if Dukakis joined the chorus. But Dukakis, whose campaign has displayed the tactical flexibility of the Spruce Goose, has been unable to articulate a clear message of his own, thereby hindering even that modest maneuver; it’s difficult to draw a sharp contrast when your own image is blurred. If it comes down to a two-man race, Dukakis could ultimately be defined passively, as the counterpoint to Gephardt. The inherent limits of Gephardt’s message may well confine his support primarily to the blue-collar voters who have sustained him so far. That would leave Dukakis with the more educated, more affluent Democrats he split with Simon in the first rounds.

Dukakis’ reluctance to challenge Gephardt’s credibility as a blue-collar tribune suggests he is comfortable with that alignment. He might think again. In 1984, those suburban, good government, BMW-and-Brie Democrats overwhelmingly preferred Hart to Walter F. Mondale. They weren’t enough.